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OTIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 


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BY  EDGAR  SALTUS 

IMPERIAL   PURPLE 

MARY   OF   MAGDALA 

THE   PACE   THAT    KILLS 

THE    PHILOSOPHY    OF   DISENCHANTMENT 

THE    ANATOMY   OF    NEGATION 

PURPLE    AND    FINE    WOMEN 


THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 


THE 

POMPS  OF  SATAN 


By 

EDGAR    SALTUS 


"Ce  livre  se  mogre  de  vous." — MALHERBE 


NEW  YORK 

MITCHELL  KENNERLEY 
MCMVI 


LIBRARY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 
DAVIS 


CONTENTS 


PAOB 


i.  VANITY  SQUARE       ..... 

ii.  THE  GOLDEN  FOLD  .....       14 

in.  THE  GILDED  GANG  .....       27 

iv.  THE  IMPORTANCE  OF  BEING  AN  EPICURE         .       40 

v.  THE  SEVENTH  DEVIL  OP  OUR  LADY     .  .       54 

vi.  DE  L' AMOUR  ......       67 

vn.  THE  TOILET  OF  VENUS      ....       80 

viii.  THE  QUEST  OF  PARADISE  ...       93 

ix.  TRUFFLES  AND  TOKAY       .  .  .  .106 

x.  THE  ENCHANTED  CARPET  .  .          .120 

xi.  THE  GOLDEN  CALF  .  .  .  .  .134 

xii.  FASHIONS  IN  POISONS        ....      149 

xiii.  CLARET  AND  CREAM          ....      162 

xiv.  HUMAN  HYENAS      .  .  .  .  .174 

xv.  THE  COURTS  OF  LOVE       .  .  .  .186 

xvi.  BLUEBEARD    ......      199 

xvii.  THE  KNIGHTS  OF  THE  GOLDEN  FLEECE          .      213 
xviii.  THE  UPPER  CIRCLES          ....      228 

xix.  THE  MODES  OF  TO-MORROW         .  .  .      240 


vii 


THE   POMPS   OF  SATAN 

i 

VANITY  SQUARE 

"WE  authors,"  Disraeli  is  rumoured  to  have 
remarked  in  the  course  of  a  conversation  with 
V.  R. ;  and  though  the  plural  was  singular,  it 
is  rumoured,  too,  that  with  it  he  flattered  her 
basely.  It  is  rumoured  also  that  nothing  ever 
flattered  her  more  except  when  he  made  her 
Empress  of  India.  These  rumours  are  repeated 
for  what  they  are  worth.  One  of  them  relates 
to  an  incident  that  occurred  a  long  time  ago, 
and  may  not  have  occurred  at  all.  Even  so, 
and  even  otherwise  a  point  remains.  Titles 
appeal  to  women.  They  are  highly  decorative, 
very  becoming,  serviceable  in  more  ways  than 
one.  They  may  not  perhaps  lessen  the  length 
of  the  ears,  but  the  attendant  tiaras  conceal  it. 
C*est  d^jcL  beaucoup.  The  taste  is  not  limited  to 
women  either.  There  are  men  who  would  not 
know  how  to  get  along  without  them.  They 

A 


2  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

secure  credit  from  tradesmen  and  attention  from 
heiresses.  What  more  could  the  heart  desire? 
In  the  circumstances  a  bill  submitted  to  the 
Italian  Parliament  merits  consideration. 

The  measure  provides  that  in  exchange  for 
coin  titles  may  be  transmuted.  After  all,  why 
not?  The  difference  between  mister  and  mon- 
seigneur  is  not  of  a  nature  to  weigh  with  a 
sturdy  American,  but  in  New  York  it  tickles 
the  girls.  Every  one  of  them  loves  a  lord, 
though  it  is  not  every  one  of  them  who  has 
a  lord  to  love. 

The  bill,  then,  is  sufficiently  praiseworthy. 
What  it  lacks  is  utility.  Since  the  beginning  of 
years  and  the  beginning  of  things  titles  have 
been  purchasable  in  Italy.  They  could  be  had 
in  the  Rome  of  the  Caesars  as  well  as  in  the 
Rome  of  the  Saints.  There  are  at  this  minute  a 
hundred  princes  who  for  a  hundred  dollars  are 
not  only  able  but  anxious  to  supply  them.  The 
process,  legally  catalogued  as  adoption,  has  been 
performed  again  and  again.  For  that  matter 
a  New  York  woman,  who  shall  be  nameless, 
secured,  for  causes  that  shall  be  nameless  also,  a 
divorce  and  journeyed  abroad.  Whether  or  not 
she  collaborated  in  a  theory  we  have  long  enter- 
tained, to  the  effect  that  a  woman  who  marries 


VANITY  SQUARE  3 

a  second  time  does  not  deserve  to  have  lost 
her  first  husband,  is  immaterial.  The  point  is 
that,  discovering  the  name  she  bore — at  arm's 
length — had  its  disadvantages,  she  purchased 
the  right  to  be  known  and  addressed  as  Princess. 
Principessa  della  Luna  Bianca,  let  us  say.  A 
year  passed.  Two  perhaps.  Ultimately  it  fell 
about  that  at  some  function  or  other  a  man 
who  had  been  introduced  gazed  musingly  at  her 
and  asked  if  he  had  not  had  the  pleasure  of 
meeting  her  somewhere  before.  The  Princess 
smiled  and  tapped  him  with  her  fan.  "Why, 
yes,  indeed ;  don't  you  remember  ?  You  used 
to  be  my  husband." 

The  story  has  a  moral,  as  all  proper  stories 
should  have.  Titles  ought  to  be  purchasable  here. 
Such  an  arrangement  would  enable  women  to 
dispense  with  husbands.  That  in  itself  is  enough 
to  commend  it.  Society  would  be  delightful 
were  women  all  married  and  all  men  single. 
But  the  idea  has  another  charm.  It  would 
check  the  export  of  heiresses.  The  latter  are  at 
a  premium.  Commercially  speaking,  the  demand 
exceeds  the  supply.  There  are  not  enough  to  go 
around.  As  a  consequence,  in  the  absence  of  a 
measure  such  as  we  have  suggested,  we  see  no 
good  and  valid  reason  why  another  should  not 


4  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

be  passed  inhibiting  their  abduction.  A  bill  of 
this  kind  would  not  interfere  with  the  tariff, 
and  might  increase  the  revenue.  It  would  be 
a  protective  measure  of  the  proper  sort.  The 
open  door  is  all  very  well,  but  not  where  our 
girls  are  concerned. 

Girls,  though,  are  so  constituted  that  there  is 
no  arguing  with  them.  They  believe  in  free 
trade.  From  certain  statistics  and  studies  we 
are  enabled  to  infer  that  they  believe  in  titles 
also.  And  very  logically.  A  title  can  be  divided. 
A  duke  makes  a  duchess,  whereas  a  man  of 
brains  cannot  share  his  intellect  with  a  fool. 
Were  it  otherwise  strawberry  leaves  might 
cease  to  appeal. 

Yet  were  things  otherwise  than  as  they  are 
life  might  be  fair  as  a  dream.  Obviously,  it  is 
just  the  reverse.  A  woman's  heart,  for  instance, 
— or,  more  exactly,  the  heart  of  a  pretty  woman 
— is  a  bonbon  wrapped  in  riddles.  A  fool  may 
stop  to  solve,  but  a  wise  man  nibbles  away.  And 
very  good  it  tastes,  too,  until  indigestion  ensues, 
and  he  turns  to  other  fare.  For  the  devil  of  it  is 
that  no  man  can  subsist  on  one  dish.  However 
delicious  the  dish  may  be  the  hour  comes  when 
it  palls.  Muhammad  probably  understood  this 
fact  when  he  promised  to  the  faithful  throughout 


VANITY  SQUARE  5 

all  eternity  a  fresh  houri  every  day.  Every  day 
is  perhaps  excessive.  Moreover,  an  eternal  feast 
might  prove  as  distressing  as  an  eternal  fast. 
Yet  we  assume  there  was  to  be  nothing  com- 
pulsory in  the  matter  and  that  the  faithful 
could  diet  if  they  chose.  "Not  too  much  of 
anything,"  said  a  profound  epicure ;  and  whether 
served  with  riddles  or  without,  a  variety  of 
bonbons,  even  in  courses,  even  in  Paradise,  must 
become  as  indigestible  as  the  repetition  of  one 
particular  sweet. 

This  is  not  right.  It  is  not  right  that  man 
should  be  so  constituted  that  he  needs  must 
weary,  not  merely  of  one  dish,  but  of  all.  But 
against  this  sorry  scheme  of  things  novelists 
without  number  and  poets  without  publishers 
have  spawned  copy  by  the  ton.  Quite  unavail- 
ingly,  too.  Nobody  by  taking  pen  and  paper 
can  add  a  charm  to  a  statue.  Life  is  just  about 
as  hard.  The  scheme  is  indeed  sorry,  particu- 
larly when  you  consider  that  the  world  is  filled 
with  charming  people  whom  we  never  meet — 
except  in  a  few  memoirs  that  are  out  of  print 
and  a  few  operas  that  are  out  of  date.  Ballets, 
indeed,  occasionally  present  them,  especially  the 
variety  known  to  foreigners  as  f6eries,  which 
are  delightful  comminglings  of  fair  faces,  lips 


6  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

of  silk,  incandescent  eyes,  skirts  of  tulle,  shuttled 
with  clinging  measures,  sudden  caresses,  startling 
flowers,  auroras,  and  apotheoses.  Representa- 
tions of  this  order  are  really  consolatory.  They 
fascinate  the  eye,  release  the  imagination,  and 
send  it  vagabonding  afar  through  the  marvels 
of  lands  where  dreams  come  true. 

"  O  Paradis"  the  tenor  sings  in  the  last  act 
of  " L'Af ricaine,"  "O  Paradis,  sorti  de  Vonde" 
There  it  is,  and  without  the  nuisance,  too,  of 
assisting  at  the  soprano's  demise  under  an  upas- 
tree.  In  these  lands  there  is  nothing  of  that 
kind  —  at  most  the  spectacle  of  a  faithless 
favourite  sewn  in  a  sack  and  tossed  by  your 
hurrying  eunuchs  into  the  deep  and  indifferent 
sea.  That,  though,  is  a  sight  very  dreamlike 
and  agreeable  to  contemplate.  So,  too,  are  the 
caravans  of  Circassians,  the  swaying  palanquins, 
the  sombre  and  splendid  bazaars.  The  turbans 
of  the  merchants  that  pass  are  heavy  with 
sequins  and  secrets.  The  pale  mouths  of  the 
blue-bellied  fish  that  rise  from  the  sleeping 
waters  are  aglow  with  gems.  In  courtyards 
curtained  with  cashmeres  chimeras  and  hippo- 
griffs  await  your  approach.  In  the  air  is  the 
odour  of  spices,  the  scent  of  the  wines  of 
Schiraz.  The  silence  is  threaded  with  the  hum 


VANITY  SQUARE  7 

of  harps,  with  the  murmur  of  kisses  and  flutes. 
The  days  are  grooved  with  alternating  delights ; 
they  detain,  indeed,  but  the  nights  enthral. 
There  are  a  thousand  and  one  of  them,  and 
they  are  the  preludes  to  the  Pays  des  Songes. 

Before  entering  a  mosque  the  Moslem  leaves 
his  slippers  at  the  door.  Before  entering  fairy- 
land leave  stocks  in  the  Street,  perplexities 
behind,  and  with  them  the  usual  collection  of 
unhallowed  ruminations.  These  things  are  as 
sacrilegious  as  automobiles  would  be.  They  are 
out  of  place  in  a  land  where  the  palace  of  the 
White  Cat  rears  its  enchanted  turrets  to  the  sky, 
where  at  any  moment  you  may  stumble  over  the 
Belle  au  Bois  Dormant,  find  Cinderella's  little 
foot  in  your  hand,  encounter  the  seduction  of 
sylphs,  the  witchery  of  /the  willis,  feel  the  April 
of  their  lips  on  yours,  taste  the  rapture  of  life  as 
it  ought  to  be,  the  savour  of  immaculate  joy. 

Before  Tahiti  was  vulgarised  by  Loti,  and 
Bora  Bora  took  to  moral  corsets,  it  is  possible 
that  the  savour  was  apprehensible  there.  It  is 
possible  that  in  some  of  the  untrotted  islands 
of  the  South  Seas  an  illusion  of  it  still  subsists. 
But  elsewhere  it  has  gone.  Even  the  ballet 
does  not  produce  it  any  more.  It  has  vacated 
the  earth  as  beauty  will  do.  Progress  is  too 


8  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

utilitarian  for  either.  What  progress  does  not 
need  it  lops.  It  has  made  it  easy  to  travel 
and  nowhere  to  travel  to.  Enchantments  have 
evaporated,  hippogriffs  are  no  more.  The  sky 
has  changed  and  colours  with  it.  There  are 
scenes  as  there  are  sorceries  that  have  gone 
from  us  for  ever.  There  are  advertisements 
where  there  were  witcheries,  commerce  where 
there  were  caprices,  patent  medicines  in  lieu  of 
enthralments,  the  shriek  of  steam  where  sylphs 
have  strayed.  The  one  place  in  which  the  past 
and  the  poetry  of  it  persevere  is  the  neighbour- 
hood of  thrones.  There  is  the  ideal's  last  refuge. 
There,  too,  is  the  Mecca  of  Vanity  Square. 

Americans  who  want  to  get  there,  and  cannot, 
•catalogue  as  snobbish  those  who  can  and  do. 
Everything  being  possible,  the  cataloguing  may 
be  exact.  But  snobbishness  is  not  appreciated 
at  its  worth.  It  is  something  very  commend- 
able. Snobbish  people  are  always  trying  to 
appear  other  than  what  they  are,  and  the  effort 
is  certainly  virtuous.  Contentment  is  a  very 
degraded  condition.  It  is  bovine.  Discontent 
is  a  most  reassuring  sign.  People  are  always 
discontented  when  they  are  trying  to  improve. 
The  desire  for  improvement  is  an  aspiration, 
and  what  aspiration  more  praiseworthy  can 


VANITY  SQUARE  9 

there  be  than  the  ambition  to  look  down  on 
your  neighbour?  Call  it  snobbish  if  you  will, 
but  recognise  that  snobbishness  has  its  merits. 

Courts,  too,  have  theirs.  Yet  if  we  may 
believe  what  we  hear,  and  that  is  always  such 
a  pleasure,  they  are  not  what  they  were.  Those 
who  frequent  them  take  a  succulent  satisfaction 
in  relating  the  disillusions  they  have  met.  Even 
so,  apart  from  the  ballet,  they  are  the  sole  re- 
sorts capable  of  suggesting  fairyland  now.  It 
is  unfortunate  that  Mr  Cook  is  not  in  a  posi- 
tion to  supply  round-trip  tickets  to  them,  but, 
progress  aiding,  no  doubt  that  enterprise  will 
come.  Meanwhile,  one  of  the  easiest  passports 
being  a  title,  it  is  only  natural  that  the  latter 
should  appeal. 

There  are,  though,  titles  and  titles.  A  year 
or  two  ago  the  Revue  des  Revues  demonstrated 
that  those  promenaded  by  members  of  the 
Jockey,  the  Pommes  de  Terre,  and  the  Cercle 
de  la  Rue  Royale  were  not  worth  the  cards  on 
which  they  were  printed;  that  there  was  not 
an  authentic  noble  in  the  lot.  The  demonstra- 
tion was  denounced  as  unpatriotic.  We  saw  it 
alleged  that  it  was  calculated  to  throw  a  scare 
into  the  hearts  of  American  girls,  who,  being 
heavy  consumers,  had  largely  increased  the 


10  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

national  wealth.  At  the  time  this  argument 
did  not  seem  to  appeal  to  our  friend  and 
brother-in-letters,  M.  Henri  Rochef  ort.  "  Should 
it  occur,"  he  declared,  "  should  the  hour  come 
when  our  sprigs  of  nobility  are  no  longer 
purchased  by  exotic  quails,  I,  for  one,  would 
not  weep  for  grief."  And  M.  Rochef  ort  added: 
"  The  idle  descendant  of  a  Crusader  is  a  sucking 
pig.  The  female  Yankee  is  a  peacock.  What 
good  can  such  a  couple  work?  There  may 
have  been  unions  between  them  which  have 
not  turned  out  badly,  yet  in  that  case  the 
parties  have  been  more  lucky  than  wise." 

M.  Rochefort  is  quite  right.  It  was,  of 
course,  very  rude  of  him  to  call  our  heiresses 
names.  Besides,  admitting  them  to  be  quails, 
they  can't  be  peacocks  also.  That  is  impossible. 
Ornithology  is  unacquainted  with  any  such 
fowl.  But  he  scored  a  point.  To  us  as  to 
him  the  heiress  is  a  rara  avis.  Hence  the 
beauty  of  the  measures  which  we  have  sug- 
gested. Hence  the  pro  bono  publicanism  of 
them,  too.  Though  we  have  lost  our  bisons 
let  us  preserve  our  birds  —  from  Frenchmen 
at  least — and  while  we  are  at  it,  from  all  other 
foreigners  as  well.  Russians  especially,  though 
very  taking,  should  be  admired  with  circum- 


VANITY  SQUARE  11 

spection  and  avoided  with  care.  They  are  all 
princes,  and  we  know  what  the  Bible  says 
about  them.  If  we  have  our  facts  correctly 
—  and  if  not  it  would  not  surprise  us  —  their 
prevalence  is  due  to  some  old  ruffian  of  a  Tsar 
who  in  a  drunken  fit  ordered  every  hereditary 
title,  save  those  appertaining  to  his  own  family, 
to  be  abolished  and  the  documents  relating  to 
them  destroyed.  These  titles  some  successor  or 
other  restored,  but  as  the  original  grants  were 
no  longer  in  existence  everybody  who  possessed 
the  energy  was  free  to  put  in  a  claim.  From 
the  results  we  should  judge  that  the  number 
of  persons  possessing  that  energy  must  have 
been  inordinate. 

German  titles  are  not  advantageous  either. 
When  authentic  they  are  awkward,  and  Ameri- 
can purchasers  are  not  in  favour  in  Berlin. 
The  Kaiser  calls  them  gemeine  Amerikanerin- 
nen.  English  titles,  though  they  come  higher, 
provide  more  for  the  money.  They  are,  per- 
haps, the  best.  But  though  the  best,  we  cannot 
regard  them  as  desirable  for  our  girls.  When 
obtained,  certain  results  have  occasionally  en- 
sued. In  these  instances  the  party  of  the  second 
part  is  usually  a  duke  who  in  other  circum- 
stances would  prefer  to  follow  a  fashion  set 


12  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

by  his  ancestors  and  get  a  bride  from  among 
the  nobility  of  his  land.  But  the  nobility  is 
poor,  the  castle  is  crumbling,  the  moat  is 
choked,  sheriffs  are  passing  over  the  draw- 
bridge, there  are  no  warders  to  guard  it  any 
more.  In  short,  there  are  ways  and  means 
to  be  considered,  and  who  can  supply  them 
so  well  as  a  nice  little  American  girl? 

That  little  girl  is  not  merely  nice;  she  is 
charming.  She  never  omits  to  have  in  her 
that  which  will  make  a  duchess  worthy  of  the 
strawberry  leaves.  And  so  quickly  does  she 
assimilate  the  conditions  of  her  new  existence 
that  no  one  suspects  her  origin,  no  one  dreams 
that  she  once  had  a  twang,  that  she  lived  in 
a  land  of  savages  and  dressed  in  feathers  and 
beads.  No;  no  one  knows  it  except  the  duke, 
and  he  is  too  ducal  to  tell,  too  considerate  to 
let  anyone  suppose  that,  among  the  redskins 
where  he  found  her,  had  she  not  had  bag  upon 
bag  of  wampum  he  would  have  rubbed  noses 
and  passed  on  his  way.  And  he  is  very  sweet 
to  that  little  girl,  very  loving,  very  thought- 
ful, very  courteous,  until  it  occurs  to  him  that 
there  are  other  women  in  the  land,  that  a  duke 
acknowledges  to  himself  but  one  law  —  his 
pleasure,  and  to  his  duchess  but  one  duty  — 


VANITY  SQUARE  13 

neglect.  And  presently  in  the  castle,  rebuilt 
now  and  rewardered,  yet  so  far  from  the  long 
grass  and  palm-trees  of  home,  that  little  girl 
will  sit  and  weep,  and  if  she  is  a  good  little 
girl,  as  all  nice  little  American  girls  are  sup- 
posed to  be,  she  will  sit  and  weep  alone. 

The  tableau  is  affecting,  yet  hardly  emu- 
lative. But,  then,  arrangements  of  this  kind 
do  not  always  turn  out  so  badly.  On  the  con- 
trary, they  turn  out  worse.  The  parties  to 
them  yawn  in  each  other's  face. 

Such  are  the  conditions  in  Vanity  Square. 
When  those  who  dwell  there  are  not  up  to 
some  devilishness  they  are  bound  to  be  alarm- 
ingly dull. 


II 

THE   GOLDEN  FOLD 

SAID  a  man  to  us  once  :  "  I  have  a  big  income,  I 
have  a  big  house.  I  want  to  get  into  society. 
How  can  I  do  it?"  "Bite  by  bite,"  we  replied. 
He  took  the  tip.  Everybody  with  whom  he  had 
so  much  as  a  bowing  acquaintance  he  asked,  re- 
asked  and  asked  again  to  dine.  Some  accepted 
Some  went  so  far  as  to  be  decently  civil  in 
return.  Before  he  moved  to  another  and,  we 
assume,  a  higher  sphere,  you  could  have  read 
his  name  in  the  papers  every  day  of  your  life. 
That  is  social  success. 

Coincidentally,  a  woman  of  wealth  approached 
us  with  a  cognate  query.  "Leave  a  lot  of 
p.  p.  c.'s  and  go  abroad,"  we  told  her.  The  advice 
was  taken.  The  lady  left  cards  on  everyone  she 
knew  not  yet  longed  to,  migrated  to  Mayfair, 
consorted  with  countesses,  returned  to  Man- 
hattan, where,  received  at  first  as  a  distant 
cousin,  ultimately  she  succeeded  in  dying  in 
an  odour  of  perfect  gentility.  What  more  could 
the  heart  desire? 

14 


THE  GOLDEN  FOLD  15 

These  are  magnificent  instances.  But  they 
occurred  in  an  epoch  when  New  York  was 
closer-fisted  and  more  open-armed  than  now. 
To-day,  barring  the  court  circles  of  Vienna  and 
the  region  known  in  mythography  as  the 
Faubourg  Saint-Germain,  there  is  no  society 
in  which  the  line  is  drawn  tighter. 

That  line  is  not  the  clothes-line.  In  Man- 
hattan you  behold  coronets  on  republican 
cambrics,  crowns  on  democratic  heads,  and 
debutantes  in  three-thousand-dollar  frocks. 
These  things  are  very  beautiful.  So,  too,  is 
the  taste  of  the  exponents.  C*est  le  monde  ou 
Von  sen  fiche. 

The  line  is  not  drawn  at  birthmarks  either. 
The  latter  are  essential  in  Vienna.  But  no- 
where else.  To  be  hoffdhig  there  you  must 
have  a  bushel  of  quarterings.  You  need  not 
necessarily  have  anything  more.  They  suffice. 
But  in  their  absence  you  possess  nothing  which 
represents,  however  remotely,  a  recognisable 
existence.  Your  dimensions  become  microscopic. 
You  are  a  minim,  a  molecule,  a  mite. 

The  Faubourg  Saint-Germain  is  assumed  to  be 
equally  fastidious.  The  assumption  is  erroneous. 
The  Faubourg  is  more  exacting.  There  your 
quarterings  are  important  but  so  also  is  the 


16  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

quality  of  your  intelligence.  Descent  from  a 
problematic  Crusader  is  a  prime  prerequisite. 
But,  incidentally,  you  must  be  negative.  Any- 
thing that  savours  of  originality  is  distinctly 
common — rasta,  to  use  a  localism  of  the  realm. 
(Test  le  monde  OIL  Von  sennuie. 

Manhattan  is  more  liberal.  Birth  is  not  a 
requisite.  If  it  were,  the  golden  fold  would 
be  composed  of  young  people  still  in  their  teens. 
Society,  as  at  present  organised,  had  no  exis- 
tence twenty  years  ago.  The  men  and  women 
who  moved  and  had  their  social  being  then 
have  been  lost  and  submerged  in  the  plutocratic 
flood.  Here  and  there  a  few  ultimate  survivors 
linger  on.  But  their  condition  is  quasi-phan- 
tasmal. At  an  affair  that  occurred  during  the 
winter,  a  woman  said  to  us :  "  Who  is  that  man 
over  there  who  does  not  seem  to  know  anyone  ?  " 
"An  old  New  Yorker,"  we  replied. 

Brains  are  not  a  requisite  either.  In  that 
Manhattan  has  modelled  itself  after  the  Fau- 
bourg. But,  unlike  the  Faubourg,  in  and  about 
Manhattan  originality  counts.  It  not  merely 
counts,  it  consists  in  devising  new  ways  of 
being  dull.  In  a  society  at  once  so  polished 
and  so  ornate  that  is  quite  as  it  should  be. 
The  result,  too,  is  commendable.  Society  toils 


THE  GOLDEN  FOLD  17 

and  spins  yarns,  but  it  does  not  read.  That 
is  not  because  it  does  not  know  how.  It  is 
because  it  has  a  fine  contempt  for  literature — 
yet  a  contempt  which,  though  fine,  is  hardly 
that  which  familiarity  breeds. 

Though  birth  is  not  a  requisite,  or  brains 
either,  genealogy  is.  The  statement  being  com- 
plex, illustrations  may  clarify  it.  In  London  you 
begin  by  being  smart  and  end  by  going  into 
trade.  In  New  York  you  begin  by  going  into 
trade  and  end  by  being  stupid.  The  process  is 
not  identical,  but  the  result  is  the  same.  With 
this  difference,  however.  In  London  the  smart- 
ness of  smart  people,  whether  in  trade  or  out, 
is  due  to  genealogical  memories.  In  New  York 
smartness  is  derived  from  genealogical  manu- 
facturers. 

And  quite  naturally.  It  is  related  of  a  Turk 
that,  being  shown  over  the  country  seat  of  an 
English  gentleman,  he  mused  at  the  pictures  of 
the  incumbent's  progenitors.  "  You  paint  them  ?  " 
he  asked  of  the  housekeeper.  The  woman 
replied  that  she  did  not  know  how  to  paint. 
"  You  try,"  he  added,  "  and  you  paint  better." 

On  Fifth  Avenue  housekeepers  are  spared  such 
sarcasm.    There  are  a  dozen  houses  we  wot  of  in 
which  the  pictures  of  the  owners'  ancestors  are 
B 


18  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

works  of  the  highest  art.  No  art,  indeed,  could 
be  higher.  For  while  the  people  depicted  in  the 
English  portraits  once  lived,  however  hideously, 
the  people  whom  the  pictures  on  Fifth  Avenue 
represent  never  lived  at  all.  There  is  triumph- 
ant democracy. 

There  is  surprising  magic,  too.  Endearing 
examples  of  similar  witchcraft  reside  in  the 
archives  of  the  local  biographical  society,  which, 
during  its  incubatory  incorporation,  excited  the 
hilarity  of  the  impolite.  It  used  to  be  a  jest  in 
Europe  that  we  imported  our  nobility.  This 
institution  has  done  away  with  that  slur. 
Statistics  in  hand,  it  has  shown  that  we  produce 
enough  not  only  for  home  consumption  but  for 
export  purposes  to  boot.  According  to  the 
statistics  cited,  we  have  already  succeeded  in 
raising  a  regiment  of  descendants  of  Alfred  the 
Great  and  an  army  of  descendants  of  other  and 
yet  greater  sovereigns. 

After  all,  why  not?  Yet  precisely  as  in  an 
occasional  newspaper  article  you  read  of  a 
prince  running  a  lift  here,  of  another  serving  as 
waiter  there,  of  a  third  who  has  set  up  as  shoe- 
maker somewhere  else,  and,  all  of  them,  the 
world  forgetting  by  the  world  forgot,  so  does 
New  York  society  ignore  those  who  are  merely 


THE  GOLDEN  FOLD  19 

princely  and  nothing  else.  As  one  may  see,  its 
line  is  by  no  means  lax. 

In  spite  of  an  absurd  idea  to  the  contrary,  that 
line  is  not  wholly  auriferous.  Nine  months  out 
of  twelve  the  hotels  of  New  York  are  congested 
with  Croesuses,  with  whom  even  the  clerks  will 
not  condescend  to  converse.  Apart  from  these 
hobo  millionaires,  the  town  is  packed  with 
plutocrats,  of  whose  existence  we  learn  only 
through  hearing  that  they  are  dead.  Occasion- 
ally, as  in  a  recent  case,  they  have  to  be 
murdered  to  attract  our  attention. 

These  poor  devils  come  from  the  pampas,  the 
savannahs,  the  mines,  the  lakes,  from  the  Lord 
knows  where  else  besides.  They  come,  allured 
by  the  phantasmagoria  of  the  mirage  projected 
from  Upper  Fifth  Avenue,  drawn  by  newspaper 
reports  of  famous  functions,  dazzled  by  the 
glamour  of  the  golden  fold.  The  sheen  of  the 
spangles  of  glittering  gaieties  entrances  such 
wives  and  daughters  as  they  have  managed  to 
accumulate.  It  magnetises  the  loot  of  their 
hazardous  days.  Then,  too,  knowing  the  country 
is  free,  believing  that  one  man  is  as  good  as 
another,  certain  that  they  have  the  coin,  con- 
vinced that  that  talisman  is  a  sesame,  urged 
by  the  females  of  their  clan,  propelled  by  their 


20  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

own  ambitions,  excited  by  such  imagination  as 
they  possess,  in  dreams  forecast  and  in  leaded 
type  they  behold  the  announcement  of  their 
presence  among  the  gala  gangs  behind  the 
gilded  gates.  Whereupon  the  poor  devils 
conclude  that,  since  the  dream  is  blissful,  the 
realisation  must  be  Paradise. 

In  the  thousand  and  one  nights  that  were 
less  astronomic  than  our  own  Paradise  was  a 
definite  resort.  It  was  very  neighbourly.  It 
was  just  overhead.  Since  then  it  has  tumbled 
down.  What  is  worse,  there  is  nothing  to  take 
its  place.  You  cannot  go  to  Elysium.  It  is 
out  of  date.  There  is  no  use  getting  a  guide- 
book and  looking  up  Valhalla.  It  has  fallen  to 
pieces.  It  does  not  pay  to  hunt  for  lodgings 
in  the  Orient  either.  Devachan  is  a  fiction  and 
Nirvana  a  fraud.  The  Star  of  Ormuzd  has 
burned  out  in  the  sky.  The  Lotus  of  Azure 
has  vanished. 

These  plaisances  were  so  many  synonyms  for 
happiness.  In  their  disappearance  it  is  but 
natural  that  the  mind  of  the  ordinary  man 
should  cast  about  for  a  substitute.  The  mind 
of  the  ordinary  man  is  an  engaging  collection 
of  zeros.  An  ordinary  woman  has  the  mind  of 
a  hen.  The  latter  appreciation  is  not  our  own. 


THE  GOLDEN  FOLD  21 

It  was  expressed  by  Confucius,  who  considerately 
added  that  an  extraordinary  woman  has  the 
mind  of  two  hens. 

To  a  conjunction  of  intelligences  of  this  order 
society  appeals  as  Paradise  did  in  nights  less 
astronomic.  But  because  society  appeals  to 
them  it  by  no  means  follows  that  they  appeal 
to  society.  On  the  contrary.  Along  Fifth 
Avenue  they  have  the  substance  of  shadows  on 
glass.  There  the  tramp  millionaires,  whom  we 
have  been  considering,  discover,  very  greatly  to 
their  own  amazement,  and  without  any  assis- 
tance whatever  from  idealistic  philosophy,  that, 
in  spite  of  their  coin,  they  do  not  exist :  that 
they  are  not  even  the  perceptions  of  a  perceiver. 
Then  it  is  quite  one  to  them  whether  they 
are  murdered  or  not.  Dreams  are  true  while 
they  last.  The  dreams  of  these  poor  devils 
do  not  linger  long  after  they  have  crossed  the 
ferry. 

Yet  what  could  be  more  logical?  There  are 
people  who  compose  cantatas.  They  have  the 
gift  for  that  sort  of  thing.  There  are  others 
who  can  tell  what  will  not  happen  to  you  six 
months  hence.  They  have  the  faculty  for  such 
clairvoyance.  There  are  women  who,  on  not  a 
dollar  more  than  twenty-four  thousand  a  year, 


22  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

manage  to  look  like  angels.  Only,  of  course, 
much  better  dressed.  It  is  an  art  of  theirs. 
There  are  novelists  whose  produce  sells  by  the 
ton.  They  have  a  charm  that  appeals  to 
chambermaids. 

It  is  the  same  way  with  New  York  society. 
To  belong  to  it  birth  is  not  necessary.  It  is 
not,  as  vagrant  plutocrats  fancy,  a  question 
of  bank  accounts.  Brains  have  nothing  to  do 
with  it,  breeding  less.  It  is  wholly  and  solely  a 
matter  of  temperament. 

In  Paris  it  is  a  platitude  that  a  man  is  born  an 
Academician  as  he  is  born  a  prelate  or  a  bore. 
He  may,  if  it  pleases  him,  abuse  the  Academy 
continuously,  and  be  elected  none  the  less ;  but 
three  hundred  masterpieces,  recognised  as  such 
by  the  genuflections  of  an  adoring  universe,  and 
even  by  the  Academy  itself,  will  not  aid  him  to 
open  its  doors  unless  he  be  predestined. 

Society  is  quite  like  the  Academy.  If  destiny 
has  given  you  the  temperament  it  is  a  mere 
detail  who  and  what  you  are.  Your  mother  may 
have  been  a  cook  and  your  grandfather  a  crook 
— you  will  get  there.  But  if  you  lack  the  tem- 
perament, then,  though  you  descend  from  Charle- 
magne, though  you  have  the  manners  of  a 
Chesterfield,  the  genius  of  Caesar,  and  the  coin 


THE  GOLDEN  FOLD  23 

of  Croesus,  you  might  as  well  try  your  hand 
at  cantatas,  at  clairvoyance,  at  seraphising  on 
small  sums,  at  charming  chambermaids  with 
stupidities,  as  attempt  to  get  in.  Yet  if, 
through  accident,  attraction,  or  affiliation,  you 
should  do  so,  you  will  not  remain.  It  will  not 
be  because  you  are  urged  to  go.  It  will  be 
because  you  do  not  care  to  stop.  The  tem- 
perament will  be  lacking. 

Given  the  temperament,  and,  in  an  atmos- 
phere of  orris,  you  will  discover  women  talking 
about  nothing  at  all  to  men  who  have  devoted 
their  lives  to  the  subject.  In  sittings  limited 
in  spaciousness,  but  unlimited  in  splendour,  you 
will  encounter  the  prettiest  girls  in  the  world; 
heiresses  of  the  first  water,  the  deliciousness  of 
ruedelapaixian  confections,  the  aroma  of  Man- 
hattan mingling  with  the  accents  of  Mayfair. 

You  will  observe,  too,  the  same  piaffe  as  in 
Paris;  the  same  veneer  that  Vienna  displays. 
You  will  miss,  though,  the  grace  and  seduction 
of  manner,  the  desire,  coupled  with  the  design,  to 
please,  which  is  noticeable  there.  But  then,  as 
you  will  be  necessarily  aware,  the  local  young 
person  has  been  so  cracked  up  that  she  fancies 
herself  top  of  the  heap,  dispensed  as  such  from 
any  effort. 


24  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

In  health,  colouring,  spirits,  and  general  je  m'en 
fichisme  she  is  indeed  a  little  dear,  and  the  fact 
that  she  has  not  been  schooled  to  charm  has,  as 
all  things  else  have,  an  explanation.  In  European 
circles  women  have  nothing  to  do  but  that,  and 
they  do  it  to  perfection.  They  put  flowers  in 
your  heart,  to  which,  years  after,  you  may  turn 
and  find  fresh  and  unfaded  still.  With  legerde- 
main of  that  kind  the  breeziness  of  our  climate 
interferes.  Girls  here  have  other  allurements, 
tricks  worth  two  of  that.  They  are  disquietingly 
candid  and  delectably  serene.  Moreover,  like  all 
objets  de  luxe,  they  are  a  pleasure  to  behold.  It 
is  their  conversation  that  is  less  enticing.  On 
the  subject  of  that  which  it  is  colloquial  to  term 
Who's  What,  and  Why,  the  immaturest  among 
them  could  give  a  lexicographer  points.  But 
that  aria  at  an  end,  the  rest  of  their  repertoire 
detains  only  those  who  have  the  temperament 
to  withstand  it. 

Aristocracy,  an  old  chemist  announced,  should 
be  composed  of  equal  parts  of  beauty  and  of 
brains.  In  the  pharmacy  of  American  plutocracy 
brains  are  put  up  homeopathically.  The  enter- 
tainments of  the  gilded  gang  provide  you  with 
everything  that  eye  and  stomach  can  decently 
require.  There  is  the  beauty  and  the  bowl. 


THE  GOLDEN  FOLD  25 

n  y  a,  comme  aux  beaux  jours  dantan,  des 
/ranches  repues  et  des  vastes  lippfos.  Yet  always 
by  way  of  interlude  are  there  illustrations  in 
the  gymnastics  of  yawning. 

Save  among  the  decrepit  and  the  kids,  there  is 
rarely  the  rumour  of  a  flirtation.  Of  scandal, 
this  year,  there  has  been  barely  a  breath.  In 
Europe,  autre  guitare.  But  over  there  women, 
being  sure  of  their  position,  do  not  bother  them- 
selves with  it,  while  in  New  York  they  are  too 
busy  with  what  they  call  their  status  to  go  poach- 
ing on  one  another's  preserves.  The  tone  is  there- 
fore quite  edifying,  and  very  dull.  It  resembles 
that  of  a  club  of  millionaires  in  which  few  of 
the  members  think  and  none  have  emotions. 

This  is  not  right.  These  people  should  do 
nothing  but  sin  and  sparkle.  They  should  be 
forced  to  amuse  us,  if  only  in  return  for  the 
attention  with  which  they  are  gratified  by  the 
country  at  large.  Time  was  when  they  did.  It 
is  not  so  long  ago  that  they  treated  the  world  to 
a  series  of  splendid  wickednesses,  to  stunning 
treacheries,  to  superb  betrayals,  and  therewith 
to  an  arrogance  so  medieval  that  in  certain 
cases  occurring  in  our  private  practice  we  saw 
mortification  morbus  set  in  and  death  ensue.  It 
was  like  living  in  a  novel  to  move  among  these 


26  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

people,  and  not  a  three-volume  English  affair 
either,  nor  yet  in  the  dollar  and  fifty  cents'  worth 
of  truck  which  American  authors  serve,  but  a 
novel  such  as  d'Annunzio  could  write  and  the 
authorities  would  seize. 

For  never,  perhaps,  except  in  the  Rome  of  the 
Caesars,  has  there  been  gathered  together  in 
one  city  a  set  so  rich,  so  idle,  so  profoundly 
uninterested  in  anything  save  themselves.  No 
wonder  there  are  proletarians.  There  is  no 
debt  as  faithfully  acquitted  as  contempt,  and 
the  disdain  of  these  delightful  people  for  the 
outer  world,  for  the  world  that  is  outside  of 
Burke  and  their  own  Libro  d'Oro,  is  a  point  for 
the  future  psychologist,  a  nut,  too,  for  those 
wastrels  to  crack  who  emerge  and  emigrate 
from  the  Lord  knows  where,  with  the  dream, 
absurd  in  its  pathos,  of  being  welcomed  in 
the  golden  fold. 


Ill 

THE   GILDED   GANG 

SOCIETY  we  once  defined  as  the  paradise  of  the 
plebeian.  We  are  frequently  in  error,  and  we 
were  then.  Morality  we  coincidentally  defined 
as  consisting  in  improper  thoughts  of  other 
people.  There,  too,  we  were  in  error.  But 
little  mistakes  of  this  nature  have  never  dis- 
turbed our  conscience.  To  err  is  highly  literary. 
Besides,  a  man  who  is  always  right  is  a  bore.  If 
he  does  not  send  you  to  sleep  he  makes  you  feel 
ignorant,  and  either  proceeding  is  very  vulgar. 

The  awakening  to  our  errors  is  due  to  an 
eruption,  quite  volcanic,  which  not  long  ago 
convulsed  the  press  and  reverberated  through 
the  small  talk  of  the  land.  In  the  light  of  it 
we  beheld  society  as  we  had  never  beheld  it 
before.  We  learned  that  the  gilded  gang, 
which  is  indifferently  known  as  the  Smart 
Set  and  the  Upper  Four,  is  an  aristocracy 
without  a  pedigree,  whose  Newport  morality  is 

a  zero  from  which  the  periphery  has  gone. 

27 


28  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

All  of  which,  in  correcting  our  errors,  in- 
terested us  very  much.  It  disclosed  vistas  of 
gaiety  which  we  had  not  discerned  before.  It 
disclosed  originality  also.  Personally,  we  have 
never  found  either  at  Newport.  There,  as  in  the 
metropolitan  crush,  the  gilded  gang  has  seemed 
to  us  ornamental  and  inept.  In  other  climes 
and  epochs  society  was  livelier.  According 
to  history,  it  used  to  sin  and  sparkle.  Accord- 
ing to  observation,  to-day  it  sins  and  yawns. 

That  may  be  progress,  but  it  is  not  right — the 
yawning  at  least.  The  sinning  is  another  guitar, 
on  which  we  will  presently  strum.  Besides,  as- 
suming that  sinning  there  be,  it  has  a  precedent 
to  back  it  up.  What  more  could  the  censorious 
require?  Unless  we  are  again  in  error,  and  it 
would  not  surprise  us  if  we  were,  Antisthenes 
described  the  jeunesse  dorge  of  Athens  as  the  cos- 
metics of  sin,  an  expression  which  so  pleased 
Juvenal — or  if  not  Juvenal,  then  some  other  chap 
—that  he,  or  whoever  it  may  have  been,  handed 
it  out  in  Rome.  It  will  be  seen  that  we  have  no 
pseudo-erudition  to  display.  But  there  are  cer- 
tain things  we  remember.  Among  others,  the 
inkstand  which  Luther  flung  at  Satan  and  his 
pomps.  That  is  entirely  too  lovely  to  forget. 
So  also  is  the  farandole  which  Diderot,  Voltaire, 


THE  GILDED  GANG  29 

et  al,  executed  on  the  follies  of  fine  folk,  and  from 
which  a  revolution  ensued.  And  look  at  Mr 
Dooley !  All  these  cynics  have  shown  up  society 
quite  as  thoroughly  as  the  press  has  talked  it 
down.  As  a  result,  progress  is  manifest.  Where 
it  sparkled,  now  it  yawns.  Only  the  sinning 
remains. 

For  sinning  there  is,  though  it  be  but  in  taste, 
of  which  society  has  so  much,  and  all  of  it  so  bad. 
Yet,  no  ;  there  we  are  in  error  again.  Not  all  of 
it,  but  a  good  deal.  A  good  deal  is  more  than 
enough.  "Not  too  much  of  anything,"  said 
Epictetus,  whom  society  never  reads,  not,  of 
course,  because  it  does  not  know  how,  but 
because  it  does  not  consider  it  smart  to  read 
anything.  And  why  should  it?  In  these  days 
of  emetic  fiction  there  is  nothing  fit  to  read. 
Then,  too,  it  is  so  much  more  delightful  to 
live  novels.  In  which  respect,  if  we  may 
believe  everything  we  hear,  the  existence  of 
the  gilded  gang  is  comparable,  as  already  noted, 
to  a  romance  that  d'Annunzio  might  write, 
and  which  if  he  did  the  authorities  would 
seize. 

Let  us  see  about  that.  To  see  it  the  better 
place  aux  dames.  Among  them  we  have  beheld 
not  a  few  who  resembled  nothing  so  much  as- 


30  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

figurines  of  Fragonard  retouched  by  Felix.  They 
are  adorably  constructed  and  constructed  to  be 
adored.  What  is  quite  as  appetising  is  the  fact 
that  they  dress  with  a  deliciousness  that  never 
anywhere,  at  any  time,  has  been  exceeded. 
Whether  they  digress  with  equal  effect  is  a 
matter  which  we  will  reach  later  on.  Mean- 
while it  is  worth  noting  that  the  beauty  of 
the  raiment  of  the  young  empresses  of  old 
Byzance  is  not  in  it  with  them.  A  dream,  a 
delight,  and  a  desire,  is  the  briefest  form  in 
which  their  millinery  can  be  expressed. 

In  addition,  even  during  the  RSgence — had  you 
had  the  good  fortune  to  have  lived  in  that 
fortunate  time — you  could  not  have  dined  more 
admirably  than  you  may  at  their  tables.  The 
service  is  impeccable.  At  Windsor  V.  R.  was 
served  with  greater  pomp  but  not  with  greater 
perfection.  The  tables,  too,  are  set  in  homes 
far  more  satisfactory  and  infinitely  less  uncom- 
fortable than  many  a  royal  palace.  And  about 
those  tables  you  will  see  stones  by  comparison 
to  the  glare  of  which  there  are  crown  jewels 
that  are  lack-lustre. 

The  bank  accounts  are  as  gorgeous  as  the 
gems.  Since  the  days  when  Caligula  got  away 
with  a  sum  equal  to  four  hundred  millions  of 


THE  GILDED  GANG  31 

our  money,  and  in  so  doing  succeeded,  to  his 
delight  and  to  ours,  in  turning  himself  into  a 
bankrupt  god,  an  emperor  without  a  copper, 
since  those  fair  days,  and  the  fairer  ones  still, 
in  -which  Heliogabalus  declined  to  touch  the 
same  garments,  the  same  shoes,  the  same  jewels, 
the  same  dishes,  the  same  lips  twice,  there  has 
been  nothing  like  unto  it — financially,  that  is — 
no,  not  even  when  Hertford,  Hamilton,  and  De 
Grammont-Caderousse  startled  Europe  with  the 
splendid  uproar  of  their  orgies. 

Add  that  all  up  and  you  will  find  that  there 
is  more  money  represented  in  the  gilded  gang 
than  in  any  other  society  however  famous  or 
infamous.  You  will  find  also  that  among  these 
people  there  are  better  opportunities  for  pro- 
digality than  have  been  enjoyed  by  any  society 
however  distinguished  or  extinguished.  And 
not  merely  for  prodigality  profuse  and  perverse, 
but  for  wickedness  magnificent  and  majestic. 
Since  the  Medici  vacated  the  planet  and  the 
Sun  Kings  of  France  followed  their  excellent 
example,  never  has  there  been  such  a  chance. 

Yet  that  chance  which  is  there,  seated  at  their 
tables,  careering  in  their  automobiles,  scudding 
in  their  yachts,  accompanying  them  to  the  links, 
tiptoeing  along  their  halls,  plucking  at  their 


32  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

sleeve,  whispering  to  them :  "  Behold  me ! "  they 
ignore. 

Is  not  that  a  shame?  Indeed  it  is.  It  is  re- 
grettable also.  It  is  deplorable  that  from  set- 
tings such  as  these,  from  halls  so  spacious  and 
lingerie  so  divine,  succession  of  stunning  scandals 
do  not  burst  like  bombs. 

But  they  do  not  burst.  We  regret  it,  and  our 
regret,  if  not  poignant,  at  least  is  ethical.  The 
splendour  of  billionaires  and  millionairesses 
should  be  manifest  in  Sardanapalian  luxury, 
in  super-Babylonian  magnificence,  in  Belsaraz- 
zurian  festivals,  in  Assyrian  disdain  of  the  pre- 
judices of  the  herd.  What  are  they  here  for, 
if  not  to  entertain  us?  Yet  were  they  to  go 
about  it  in  any  such  fashion  we  would  affect 
to  be  shocked,  of  course,  for  that  is  our  en- 
dearing custom.  But,  privately,  how  we  should 
revel ! 

A  succession  of  such  things,  a  beautiful  string 
of  bombs  bursting  to  an  accompaniment  of 
fanfares  in  the  monotony  of  the  eternal  blue  of 
our  sky,  a  profusion  of  stunning  scandals  tossed 
off  like  Roman  candles  in  the  azure  of  our 
nights,  a  cascade  of  devilry  and  gorgeousness 
combined,  a  high  projection  of  incandescent 
loveliness  and  licence  exploding  to  the  hum  of 


THE  GILDED  GANG  33 

harps  and  the  kiss  of  flutes,  would  do  us  all  a 
world  of  good. 

Yes,  indeed,  it  would  heighten  us  in  our  own 
esteem.  It  would  show  Europe  that  in  the 
diversions  of  our  gilded  gang  we  have  nothing 
to  envy  its  royal  circles.  There  is  patriotism, 
is  it  not?  Of  course,  the  press  would  rail  and 
the  pulpit  fulminate.  Yet,  what  of  it?  It  is 
only  through  sheer  excesses  that  man  can  in 
any  way  approach  the  ideal  which  Nature  in 
her  divine  prodigalities  herself  has  set.  It  is 
only  through  the  higher  emotions  and  their 
transcendant  aspirations  that  man  can  so  much 
as  attempt  to  clutch  some  fringe  of  her  mantle 
of  stars.  Therein  are  the  ethics  of  our  regret. 

The  gilded  gang  does  not  look  at  it  in  that 
light.  Now  and  then  behind  their  gates  there 
will  occur  a  romance  unpretentious  as  one  of 
Chopin's,  now  and  then  the  waltz  from  "Faust" 
is  heard,  now  and  again  the  Ernani  involame 
warbles  from  dog-collared  throats.  But  the 
romanze  and  the  arias  are  never  very  palpitant. 
They  are  usually  without  conviction  and  gener- 
ally in  minor  keys. 

That  is  not  right.    When  Louise  of  Belgium 
wanted  to  sing  she  sang  at  the  top  of  her  voice. 
It  is  true  she  was  declared  insane,  but  if  every 
c 


34  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

princess  of  similar  lungs  were  treated  in  that 
fashion  the  asylums  of  Europe  would  have  to 
be  enlarged.  And  look  at  that  other  princess, 
an  American  this  time,  who  executed  a  fugue 
with  a  fiddler.  She  made  no  bones  about  it 
whatever.  And  consider  the  bedrabbled  ermine 
in  the  various  courts  over  the  way,  including 
those  of  bankruptcy,  Saxony,  and  divorce. 

Consider,  too,  the  men.  There  is  Leopold,  for 
instance.  This  gentleman  is  now  too  advanced 
in  years  to  perform  any  more  fantasias,  and  his 
neighbours,  the  last  King  of  Holland  and  the 
Prince  of  Orange — Lemons  to  the  ladies  of  the 
ballet — are  dead,  damned,  too,  for  all  we  know 
to  the  contrary,  bien  quils  soient  morts  en 
hommes  qui  savent  vivre.  Yet  these  people,  to- 
gether with  their  cousins  throughout  Europe, 
are  the  very  ones  whom  the  gilded  gang  do  their 
best,  though  not  their  worst,  to  imitate,  and  in 
no  way  succeed  at  all.  The  day  is  not  distant, 
que  dis-je — what  are  we  saying? — it  is  here, 
when  the  giving  of  automobiles  and  polo  ponies 
by  way  of  cotillon  favours,  will,  with  little 
games  of  pillows  and  keys  and  other  nursery 
romps,  satisfy,  and  amply,  their  conceptions  of 
What's  What. 

A  condition  of  things  such  as  this  cries,  if  not 


THE  GILDED  GANG  35 

to  heaven,  at  least  to  us  all.  It  is  a  matter 
that  narrowly  escapes  being  personal.  Many  of 
us,  it  is  true,  possess  only  such  acquaintance  with 
the  gilded  gang  as  seeing  their  name  in  the 
paper  affords.  Many  of  us,  it  is  also  true,  are  no 
better  off  than  the  law  allows.  Yet  though  we 
live  on  a  hundred  dollars  a  day  we  can  always 
dream  of  a  million.  Moreover,  in  a  land  so  well 
supplied  with  bumper  crops  as  this  is,  nobody 
can  tell  what  spoiled  old  men  of  Fortune  the 
poorest  of  us  may  yet  become.  In  addition, 
the  gilded  gang  being  an  aristocracy  without 
a  pedigree,  we  are  not  obliged  to  regret  any 
more  than  they  do  that  the  best  part  of  us 
is  not  underground. 

But  the  point  is  that  we  are  all  interested  in 
them.  As  a  nation  we  are  simply  splendid.  We 
are  a  righteous,  self-respecting,  God-fearing  lot. 
We  have  no  cant  or  hypocrisy  or  pretence  about 
us.  We  never  have  stood,  and  never  will  stand, 
for  snobbery  of  any  kind.  In  spite  of  which,  or, 
perhaps,  precisely  on  that  account,  entrance  to 
the  gilded  gang  is  the  goal  of  every  ambition. 

A  very  laudable  ambition  it  is.  Entrance 
there  enables  you  to  take  your  proper  place. 
It  fortifies  the  consciousness  of  your  merit.  It 
throws  your  neighbour  into  spasms  of  indigna- 


36  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

tion.  That  is  quite  as  it  should  be.  Yet,  the 
circle  being  restricted,  few  are  chosen  and  many 
left.  Do  you  know  what  happens  to  the  latter  ? 
Some  affect  a  lofty  indifference.  Some  succumb 
to  mortification  morbus.  Some  become  hydro- 
phobiac.  We  have  beheld  splendid  specimens 
foaming  at  the  mouth.  We  have  understood 
that  retention  from  functions  kept  their  wives 
awake.  We  have  been  told  that  it  gave  their 
daughters  nightmares. 

Quite  unavailing,  too.  Indifference  does  not 
appeal  to  the  smart  set.  Hydrophobia,  insomnia, 
and  nightmares  do  not  either.  There  are  but 
two  things  that  do.  The  first  is  money ;  the 
second  is  push.  Given  these  little  things,  and 
in  no  time  you  are  in  the  thick  of  it.  With- 
out them,  then,  though  you  descend  from  Charle- 
magne and  have  the  soul  of  Chopin,  you  will 
never  get  there.  Jamais,  nunca,  niemals,  never. 

To  be  modish  you  must  have  money;  tons  of 
it.  You  must  have  push ;  acres,  and  more  to 
spare.  In  modesty  there  is  not  a  bit  of  merit. 
In  genteel  poverty  there  is  no  gentility  now. 
The  worship  of  what  clergymen  call  the  fatted 
calf — or  is  it  the  golden  one? — never  was  more 
ardent.  That  calf  has  Nebuchadnezzared  the 
country.  His  fleece  is  as  admired  in  society  as 


THE  GILDED  GANG  37 

his  fleecing  is  loved  in  the  Street.  Yet,  has  a 
calf  a  fleece?  No  matter.  The  simile  is  there, 
and  behind  it  is  the  gilded  gang. 

These  premises  accepted,  it  follows  that  since 
admission  to  it  is  the  dream  of  every  right- 
thinking  citizen  and  his  wife  it  would  be  nicer 
were  the  gang  remoulded  more  in  accordance 
with  our  heart's  desire.  It  would  not  only  be 
nicer,  it  would  be  gayer,  and  if  it  in  any  way 
resembled  descriptions  which  we  have  en- 
countered, it  would  be  ideal. 

These  descriptions  represent  it  as  composed  of 
vicious,  sinful,  and  wicked  people.  But  was  any- 
body ever  really  wicked?  Has  there  ever  been 
anything  in  human  nature  beyond — or  below — 
egotism,  curiosity,  the  love  of  power,  and  the 
faculty  of  being  bored?  Psychology  rather 
doubts  it.  Even  otherwise,  an  abhorrence,  real 
or  affected,  for  what  Mr  Swinburne  calls  the 
roses  and  raptures  of  vice,  is  distinctly  bourgeois. 
Quite  so.  As  for  sin,  what  is  it,  except  what  we 
think  it,  and  does  not  what  we  think  it  depend 
on  where  we  live? 

Conceptions  of  sin  vary  with  geography,  oc- 
casionally with  the  weather,  very  often  with  the 
times.  It  is  not  so  long  ago  that  the  hoop  skirt 
was  regarded  as  an  invention  of  the  devil.  Next 


38  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

year  or  the  year  after  it  will  be  the  fashion 
again.  It  is  not  so  long  ago  that  a  man,  when 
walking  with  a  woman,  offered  her  his  arm. 
Now  the  woman  would  be  considered  indecent 
if  she  took  it.  It  used  to  be  the  custom  to  drink 
claret  after  dinner.  Now  there  is  no  claret  fit 
to  drink.  But  there  are  men  who  still  offer  an 
arm  to  women,  precisely  as  there  are  others 
who  drink  chemistry  and  see  no  sinfulness  in  it. 

The  subject  therefore,  however  considered, 
resolves  itself  into  the  point  of  view.  Yet 
though  a  criterion  escape,  and  with  it  a  synonym, 
an  autonym  we  possess.  Catalogued  as  morality, 
we  once,  as  already  noted,  defined  it  as  consisting 
in  improper  thoughts  of  other  people.  In  so 
defining  it  we  have  fancied  ourselves  wrong. 
But  we  won't  any  longer.  For  it  is  in  those 
thoughts  that  sin  resides.  The  most  and  the 
worst  to  be  gathered  concerning  it  is  obtain- 
able only  from  the  small  talk  of  the  pure. 

Purity  being  rumoured  to  be  infrequent  in 
society,  it  follows  that  there  can  be  precious 
little  sinfulness  there.  Apart  from  occasional 
lapses  of  taste  there  really  is  not  much.  For 
that  matter,  barring  the  nursery  romps  to  which 
we  have  referred — barring,  too,  the  uncertain 
arias  from  "  Ernani  "  and  "  Faust " ;  barring,  also, 


THE  GILDED  GANG  39 

the  golden  calf,  the  perfection  of  millinery, 
the  perfection  of  push,  the  perfection  of  cooks 
— there  is  not  much  of  anything.  Instead  of 
being  splendidly  sinful  the  gilded  gang  is 
amazingly  dull. 

Yet,  from  afar,  how  it  glitters!  In  view  of 
which — in  view,  too,  of  the  fact  that  admission 
to  it  is  the  dream  of  every  imbecile — we  know  of 
no  good  and  valid  reason  why,  since  we  have 
reconciled  ourselves  to  one  definition,  we  should 
not  reconcile  ourselves  to  another,  and  again 
sum  up  society  as  the  paradise  of  the  pleb. 


IV 

THE   IMPORTANCE   OF   BEING 
AN   EPICURE 

THERE  is  a  story,  presumably  untrue,  and 
therefore  all  the  more  delightful,  of  an  epicure 
who  never  went  anywhere  except  to  bed  and 
the  Maison  Doree.  He  got  up,  as  a  gentleman 
should,  at  four  o'clock  in  the  afternoon,  pro- 
ceeded to  the  Maison  Doree,  and  there,  in 
devout  meditation,  prepared  for  the  serious 
business  of  life — which  is  dining. 

Whether  or  not  the  story  be  problematic, 
neither  he  nor  any  one  else  shall  longer  observe 
these  rites.  The  Maison  Dore'e,  the  anti-pen- 
ultimate resort  of  the  gourmet,  has  fallen. 

There  is  another  story,  one  for  the  truth  of 
which  we  can  vouch,  and  which,  therefore,  is 
less  inspiring,  of  a  lady  who  went  to  Paris  on 
her  honeymoon,  and  who,  returning  there  ages 
later,  remarked  that  it  had  altered.  "  Yes, 
indeed,"  the  poor  thing  added,  with  a  sigh; 

"  On  ne  suit  plus  les  femmes" 

40 


IMPORTANCE  OF  BEING  AN  EPICURE  41 

That  little  amusement  of  the  idler,  together 
with  the  serious  business  of  the  epicure,  used 
to  constitute  the  supreme  Parisian  attractions. 
Over  the  subsidence  of  the  amusement  we 
have  no  tears  to  shed.  The  point  is  that  the 
business  is  menaced.  Long  since  the  Freres 
Provenc.eaux  departed.  Vachette  has  gone. 
Vefour  has  vanished.  Only  in  memory  does 
Very  survive.  Presently  the  Cafe  Anglais  will 
close,  then  Voisin  will  pass,  and  the  last 
sanctuary  of  the  high  and  radiant  Muse  of 
Savarin  and  of  Brisse  will  have  crumbled. 
Then,  precisely  as  sculpture,  painting,  and 
the  bel  canto  have  declined,  so  will  the  art 
of  cookery. 

The  contingency  may  seem  unimportant.  It 
is  the  reverse.  In  the  art  of  cookery  is  the 
fate  of  nations. 

For  that  aphorism  we  are  indebted,  not  to 
our  inner  consciousness,  but  to  President 
Loubet.  In  the  course  of  a  recent  address 
M.  Loubet  remarked  that  the  destinies  of 
France  were  involved  in  the  supremacy  of  her 
cooks.  In  default  of  a  text  he  had  a  pretext: 
Germany  has  conquered  France  twice.  First 
with  her  bayonets  ;  latterly  with  her  beer. 
The  result  being  that,  in  the  restaurants  of 


42  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

Paris,  where  the  high  muse  once  reigned 
supreme,  you  to-day  need  an  interpreter  to 
tell  you  whether  the  dishes  are  Bavarian  or 
Berlinese. 

That  is  all  wrong.  Gastronomy  is  essentially 
eclectic.  It  admits  every  system,  adopts  every 
method,  accepts  every  school,  assimilates  every 
theory.  It  is  at  once  symbolist,  Parnassian, 
romantic,  and  classic.  Art  has  no  frontiers. 
Gastronomy  is,  primarily,  cosmopolitan.  It 
may  be  French,  Italian,  Chinese,  Russian, 
occasionally  Spanish,  but  German  —  never ! 
Never  Bavarian.  Never  Berlinese. 

German  cookery  is  bad  when  it  does  not 
happen  to  be  worse.  In  which  respect  it  re- 
sembles our  own.  Yet  that,  perhaps,  is  libel. 
There  is  nothing  viler  than  good,  plain  Ameri- 
can fare. 

No,  nothing.  A  poet  once  sneered  at  us 
and  said  that  we  have  a  hundred  religions, 
and  but  a  single  sauce — inferior  at  that,  he 
might  have  added,  and  probably  would  have, 
had  he  thought.  The  oddity  of  it  is  that 
we  did  not  get  the  sauce  from  Germany. 
Yet,  from  her  refinements,  and  the  lack  of 
them,  there  is  a  hint  that  could  be  advan- 
tageously absorbed. 


IMPORTANCE  OF  BEING  AN  EPICURE   43 

At  the  court  of  Hanover  —  to-day  extinct  — 
the  king  was  graciously  pleased  to  command 
that  on  the  royal  menus  there  should  ap- 
pear, conjointly  with  the  dishes,  the  names 
of  the  artists  by  whom  the  dishes  had  been 
composed. 

The  king  struck  the  proper  note.  Anonymity 
is  advantageous  to  the  critic,  to  the  criminal, 
and  to  the  cook.  But  not  to  the  cordon  bleu. 
A  masterpiece  should  be  signed. 

A  perfect  dinner  should  resemble  a  concert. 
As  the  morceaux  succeed  each  other,  so,  too, 
should  the  names  of  the  composers.  You  may 
not  care  particularly  to  know  what  their 
names  are,  but  they  think  you  do.  The  idea 
gratifies  them.  It  heightens  their  maestria, 
improves  their  technique,  encourages  them 
in  the  efforts  of  conception.  It  stimulates 
in  them  that  noble  pride  which  induced  the 
immortal  tragedy  of  the  kitchen  —  the  suicide 
of  Vatel,  unable  to  survive  the  dishonour  of 
a  plat  manque. 

Those  were  the  good  old  days.  At  one  par- 
ticularly delectable  banquet  there  was  produced 
a  representation  in  wax  work  of  the  labour  of 
a  queen  and  the  birth  of  a  prince.  At  another 
Mount  .ZEtna  was  served,  with  fireworks  going 


44  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

off  from  the  crater.  For  another  there  was 
prepared  a  middle  dish  of  gods  and  goddesses 
eighteen  feet  high,  yet  which,  to  the  righteous 
scorn  of  the  artist,  could  not  be  set,  because  as 
he  put  it :  "  Monseigneur  refused  to  have  the 
ceiling  heightened!" 

These  things  were  not,  of  course,  intended  to 
be  eaten.  The  genius  who  had  delighted  your 
palate  devised  them  to  charm  your  eye.  They 
were  due  perhaps,  as  all  things  are,  to  reminis- 
cence. In  days  not  better,  but  elder  and  more 
orgiac,  the  courses  were  served  on  platters  so 
wide  that  they  covered  the  tables.  On  these 
platters  you  encountered  dormice  cooked  in 
honey,  sea  wolves  flavoured  with  cinnamon, 
and  occasionally  a  beautiful  boar,  from  which, 
when  carved,  hot  quinces  fell  and  live  thrushes 
flew. 

There  was  magic  in  that.  Or,  perhaps,  it 
would  be  more  exact  to  say  that  there  was  a 
cheerful  disregard  of  expense.  The  art  of  dining 
then  was  rather  elaborate.  Vitellius  did  not  con- 
sider excessive  for  one  meal  a  sum  equivalent  to 
fifteen  thousand  dollars.  In  four  months  Caesar 
ran  up  a  supper  bill  of  twenty-five  millions. 
We  are  not  inventing  that.  It  is  all  down  some- 
where. So,  too,  is  the  fact  that  the  guests  whom 


IMPORTANCE  OF  BEING  AN  EPICURE   45 

Heliogabalus  entertained  had  set  before  them 
loaves  of  silver,  puddings  of  gold.  Before  them, 
too,  was  a  menu  embroidered  on  the  cloth — 
not  a  mere  list  of  dishes,  but  pictures,  drawn 
with  the  needle,  of  the  dishes  themselves,  and, 
presently,  when  the  precious  jest  in  metal  had 
been  enjoyed,  you  were  served  with  camels' 
heels,  combs  torn  from  living  cocks,  flamingoes' 
brains,  nightingales'  tongues,  peas  and  amber, 
fig-peckers  peppered  with  pearl  dust,  jewels  in 
jelly.  For  napkins  there  were  boys  in  whose 
curly  hair  you  wiped  your  hands.  For  tobacco 
there  were  perfumes.  For  middle  dishes  there 
were  live  lions,  properly  secured,  of  course,  but 
sometimes  a  stupid  guest,  not  knowing  that, 
fainted  from  fright.  When  the  dinner  was 
done  panels  in  the  ceiling  opened  and  flowers 
fell,  so  many  that  now  and  then  guests  that 
had  fainted  were  smothered. 

Charles  Lamb  maintained  that  no  woman 
who  led  a  pure  life  would  refuse  an  apple 
dumpling.  Between  the  table  of  an  emperor 
and  the  table  talk  of  an  essayist  there  is  a  gap 
which,  if  you  please,  we  will  bridge  in  a  moment. 
The  art  of  dining,  as  of  writing,  consists  in 
graceful  transitions.  It  is  general  ignorance 
of  both  which  makes  our  literature  so  savour- 


46  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

less  and  our  cooks  so  bad.  So  bad,  that  the 
late  Mr  Travers,  on  seeing,  newly  hung  in  his 
dining-room,  the  legend :  "  God  Bless  Our  Home," 
exclaimed  with  enthusiasm,  "  Yes,  indeed.  God 
bless  our  home,  and  damn  our  cook."  The 
latter,  it  is  agreeable  to  assume,  had  produced 
an  apple  dumpling. 

That  is  a  dish  for  which,  in  epicurean 
Rome,  a  caitiff  of  a  cook  would  not  have  been 
cursed  merely,  but  crucified.  The  art  of  the 
entremets  sucre  was  known  in  that  sybarite 
city,  and  its  traditions  are  still  preserved  by  a 
few — a  very  few — Neapolitan  chefs.  But  now- 
adays no  one  so  much  as  sees  sweets— real 
sweets,  that  is — except  in  the  Orient  and  the 
eyes  of  their  best  beloved.  The  only  other 
variety  that  can  be  comfortably  assimilated 
is  flattery.  Of  that  the  least  among  us  can 
never  have  enough. 

Other  forms  should  be  abolished.  In  their 
stead  a  little  extravagance  would  be  acceptable. 
A  lot  of  it,  for  that  matter.  The  more  the 
merrier.  Extravagance  is  highly  poetic.  So 
also  is  originality.  Metropolitan  dinners  display 
neither.  The  dishes  are  the  same.  So  also  is 
the  talk.  Both  are  abysmally  commonplace, 
utterly  pot-au-feu.  During  these  solemnities  no 


IMPORTANCE  OF  BEING  AN  EPICURE   47 

hostess,  however  smart,  has  ever  been  witty 
enough  to  introduce  a  pig. 

Why  not  ?  In  all  the  wide  realm  of  art  there 
is  nothing  more  ideally  voluptuous.  A  pig,  a 
properly  nurtured  pig,  a  pig  whose  parents  have 
been  fed  on  vipers  and  who  has  been  bathed  in 
tepid  water  twice  a  day,  a  pig,  young,  tender,  and 
shy,  is  of  delicacies  the  most  chastely  sensuous 
that  has  been  given  mortals  to  revere.  To  the 
perfect  pig,  particularly  to  the  little  pink 
darlings  of  the  Montaches  nursery,  the  table 
is  but  a  second  cradle,  and  to  the  epicure  a 
sheer  joy — a  joy  serene,  equable,  sedate,  a  joy 
wholly  suave,  quasi-paternal,  a  joy  interpret- 
able  only  by  the  hum  of  harps. 

In  lieu  of  which  there  is  the  inevitable  red- 
head, or  else  the  tiresome  canvas-back  that  is  ap- 
propriate but  for  junketing  royalty,  yet  never 
the  abiding  beatitude  that  this  little  angel 
provides,  and  which,  to  the  hum  of  harps,  it 
not  merely  provides,  but  distils.  Lacking  the 
harps,  the  cherub  should  be  served  to  the  kiss 
of  flutes,  or  better  perhaps,  to  the  accom- 
paniment of  the  tenor's  aria  from  the  last  act 
of  "Lucia." 

Then  you  have  something  fit. 

For  variation,  the  seraphic  suckling  may  be 


48  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

replaced  by  a  poularde  truffle.  It  is  not  up  to 
it.  Yet,  properly  prepared  by  a  poet,  there  you 
have  a  dish  that  should  be  eaten  with  genuflec- 
tions. It  is  sacrosanct.  The  true  epicure  rises 
and  bows  to  it.  Then  in  silent  emotion  he 
begins.  If  he  thinks  of  anything  earthly  it  is 
of  the  preliminaries  and  transitions  that  have 
lifted  him  to  this  bliss. 

In  regard  to  anterior  courses,  we  have,  in 
our  private  practice,  obtained  excellent  results 
from  a  potage  creme  d  Almond.  You  are 
requested  not  to  read  crdme  dAmant.  A 
spoonful  or  two  of  that  passing  into  empti- 
ness is  like  a  rug  of  silk  thrown  on  a  naked 
floor.  Then  not  terrapin  —  that  horrid  little 
mud-turtle,  with  its  nasty  sauce,  is,  like  canvas- 
back,  fit  only  for  touring  grand  dukes — but  a 
silver  eel. 

For  entree,  we  have  found  nothing  the  matter 
with  truffles.  Not  the  black,  but  the  white. 
Brought,  hermetically  sealed  in  glass,  from 
Piedmont,  stewed  for  fifteen  minutes  in  Sillery, 
then  for  fifteen  more  in  Clos  de  Vougeot,  and 
served  like  potatoes,  in  napkins,  these  things 
transport  you  to  Devachan. 

For  releve,  a  simple  fillet  of  reindeer  a  trifle 
decomposed.  Or,  if  that  be  impracticable,  an 


IMPORTANCE  OF  BEING  AN  EPICURE   49 

amourette — pretty  word,  isn't  it? — of  lambkin 
to  the  tune,  not  of  mint,  which  is  ignoble,  but 
of  violets,  which  is  divine. 

There  you  have  a  nice  little  dinner. 

In  it  there  is,  perhaps,  a  trace — the  very 
faintest — of  originality.  There  is,  perhaps,  a 
symptom  or  two  of  prodigality  as  well.  Per- 
haps, also,  there  is  just  a  suggestion  of  art. 
These  condiments  are  essential.  If  you  are  not 
prodigal  you  may  lead  a  pure  life,  but  you  will 
remain  a  poor  host.  If  you  are  not  original 
you  may  be  a  commendable  citizen,  but  you  will 
be  always  a  bore.  If  you  are  not  artistic  you 
may  be  a  devoted  husband,  yet  never  an  epicure. 
It  is  highly  important  to  be  that.  At  the  table 
of  the  epicure  is  the  radiant  presence  of  the 
muse. 

Yet  here,  if  you  please,  a  hint  may  be  service- 
able. It  takes  two  to  eat  a  good  dinner — the 
dinner  and  yourself.  The  number  may  be  in- 
creased. But  not  indefinitely.  A  big  dinner 
is  a  bad  dinner.  The  bigger  the  dinner  the 
worse  it  is.  At  a  perfect  dinner  there  should 
be  an  air  of  home.  When  more  than  twelve 
are  gathered  together  that  air  evaporates. 
Eight  is  better.  Four  better  yet.  To  four 
agreeably  assorted  people  a  perfect  dinner  re- 

D 


50  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

solves  into  the  ideal.  Here  endeth  the  first 
lesson. 

Here  is  the  second :  "  Not  too  much  of  any- 
thing," said  Epicurus,  and,  however  prodigal 
you  may  naturally  be,  you  must  remember 
that.  Lavishness  should  be  manifest  in  the 
service,  in  the  appointments,  in  the  surprises 
of  the  chef,  in  the  orchestras  and  aviaries 
behind  the  screens,  but  never  in  vulgar  plenty. 
Leave  all  that  to  ignorant  millionaires.  The 
distinction  of  the  gourmet  resides  in  virtuosity, 
not  in  abundance.  His  table  never  groans.  It 
chants  canticles  en  sourdine,  in  the  lilt  of  which 
you  join.  Provided,  however,  and  on  condition, 
that  Eros  be  absent. 

Eros  and  the  muse  never  have,  and  never  will, 
hit  it  off.  The  muse  is  jealous,  and  Eros  distract- 
ing. The  most  agreeable  men  and  women  to 
have  about  you  are  those  that  have  loved  and 
are  over  it.  To  that  end  married  couples  are 
indicated.  But  in  matters  epicurean  there 
is  but  one  safe  course :  Se  defter  de  V amour 
en  g6n6ral  et  des  femmes  en  cabinet  particulier. 
Here  endeth  the  second  lesson. 

The  third  concerns  the  wines.  Among  smart 
folk  there  is  an  abominable  custom  of  serving 
nothing  but  champagne.  Champagne  is  not  a 


IMPORTANCE  OF  BEING  AN  EPICURE   51 

wine.  It  is  a  beverage,  lighter  indeed  than 
brandy  and  soda,  but,  like  cologne,  fit  only  for 
demi-reps.  Among  smart  folk  you  may,  if 
you  prefer,  have  mineral  water  instead.  But 
not  the  best.  Not  Eau  de  Vals,  for  instance, 
or  Rhenser,  which  is  superior.  But  to  the 
gourmet  these  indecencies  do  not  matter.  The 
gourmet  does  not  drink  at  dinner.  He  does 
not  drink  before  dinner.  No  gourmet  has  ever 
touched  that  nastiness  that  is  called  a  cocktail. 
The  cocktail  poisons  the  palate.  The  epicure 
perfumes  it. 

The  hour  for  that  sacred  rite  arrives  when 
the  cloth  has  gone.  Then  there  should  be 
different  wines.  There  is  no  harm  in  them 
whatever.  There  is  an  idea  to  the  contrary, 
but  in  all  matters  stupidity  is  very  gener- 
ally diffused.  The  harm  is  not  in  different 
but  in  indifferent  wines.  In  mistaking  medi- 
cine for  Madeira,  for  instance,  or  chemistry  for 
claret. 

"  Claret  for  boys,  port  for  men,  but  brandy  for 
heroes,"  shouted  Johnson,  who  was  merely  a 
boor.  There  is  no  port  in  any  storm  nowadays. 
There  are  no  heroes  either.  But  there  is  yet 
Rousillon,  there  is  yet  Chateau  du  Pape.  There 
is  also  Rosenwein,  which  is  the  king  of  all  wines 


52  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

and  of  which  bastard  varieties  are  presented 
with  sonorous  titles  —  Johannisberger,  Yellow 
Seal  —  or  Blue  —  from  the  Imperial  Cellars, 
und  so  welter  etcetera^  and  so  forth. 

Of  such  syrupy  turpitudes  the  epicure  steers 
clear.  But  of  Rousillon  and  of  Rosenwein  he 
will  take  a  glass,  two  glasses,  three  perhaps,  not 
more.  Yet  to  further  perfume  the  palate  he 
may,  if  he  can  get  it,  gargle  a  thimble  of  Tokai 
Princesse,  or,  failing  that,  half  a  petit  verre  of 
mandarin  liqueur.  But  nothing  else.  Niente, 
nada,  nichts,  rien.  Nothing  whatever.  For  he 
remembers  Epicurus,  whose  life  was  one  long 
hymn  to  asceticism,  and  he  has  forgotten  the 
prayer:  "O  Lord,  reliver  us," for  his  own  liver, 
at  any  age,  is  as  good  as  Methuselah's  must 
have  been. 

These  rites  accomplished,  he  rises  not  a 
drunken  loon  but  a  fighting  cock,  inspirited 
and  prepared,  if  necessary,  to  administer  the 
the  affairs  of  state,  to  elevate  humanity,  and 
benefit  man. 

President  Loubet  is,  therefore,  quite  right. 
His  address  contains  a  hint  which  we  need. 
The  supremacy  of  French  cooks  is,  perhaps, 
nonsense.  But  there  is  no  nonsense  about  the 
relation  between  destiny  and  gastronomies.  If 


IMPORTANCE  OF  BEING  AN  EPICURE  53 

more  were  thought  of  the  latter  not  only  would 
more  be  thought,  but  thought  would  be  less 
parochial. 

Are    we    wrong,    Vatel?     Shade    of    Careme, 
have  we  erred? 


THE   SEVENTH   DEVIL   OF 
OUR  LADY 

WOMEN  who  neglected  certain  proprieties  used 
to  be  stoned.  For  that  matter,  they  are  still. 
But  more  often  than  not  the  stones  come  from 
Bond  Street.  Then,  too,  the  proprieties  are  not 
what  they  were.  Originally  they  must  have 
been  quite  simple.  To-day  conceptions  of  them 
are  tolerably  mixed.  They  vary  with  the  lati- 
tude and  even  with  the  architecture.  In  May- 
fair  and  along  Fifth  Avenue  observance  of 
them  is  an  afterthought.  In  the  slums  they 
are  a  compromise  with  the  police.  The  Middle 
Classes  are  rumoured  to  have  lumped  them 
into  a  fetish  which  they  call  Etiquette. 

What  that  may  mean  we  do  not  know  and 
refuse  to  be  informed.  Erudition  is  not  in  our 
line.  But,  summarily,  the  proprieties  may  be 
taken  as  representing  that  which  you  expect 

from  your  neighbour.     Yet,  of  course,  not  that 

54 


THE  SEVENTH  DEVIL  OF  OUR  LADY     55 

which  your  neighbour  is  permitted  to  expect 
from  you.  Otherwise  everybody  would  be  of 
the  same  mind  on  the  subject,  and  we  should 
all  know  What's  What. 

The  fact  that  we  do  not  all  know  is  sufficiently 
obvious  and  equally  deplorable  as  well.  But  it 
has  its  excuse.  The  proprieties  lack  a  criterion. 
There  is  no  solvent  by  which  an  action  can  be 
resolved  into  right  or  wrong.  Guizot  tried  to 
find  one  and  failed.  In  the  course  of  solemn 
platitudes  spawned  through  interminable  pages 
he  stated  with  perfect  philistinism  that  the 
obligations  to  avoid  wrong  and  cleave  to  right 
were  laws  as  much  acknowledged  by  man  in  his 
proper  nature  as  are  the  laws  of  logic.  Yet 
though  he  had  the  gift  of  producing  phrase- 
ology as  nauseous  as  that,  for  the  life  of  him 
he  could  not  devise  a  distinction.  To  give 
him  his  due,  though,  the  difficulty  that  he 
omitted  to  remove  he  was  tidy  enough  to  con- 
ceal. 

Aristotle  was  quite  as  circumspect.  He  stated 
that  it  does  not  depend  on  ourselves  to  be  good 
or  wicked.  The  information  may  be  consoling, 
but  it  is  hardly  helpful.  Neither  is  the  scholastic 
corollary  that  every  being  acts  according  to  his 
essence.  It  is  the  same  idea  divested  of  its 


56  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

clarity.  Nor  are  we  aided  by  repetitions  of  the 
Goethean  aria :  "  Du  bist  am  Ende  was  du  bist" 
For  there  we  get  it  again  in  German.  On  lines 
such  as  these  the  test  is  obscure.  They  promise 
but  do  not  fulfil.  Every  silver  lining  has  its 
cloud. 

Here,  though,  is  a  break  in  it.  Descartes,  who, 
if  we  may  believe  all  that  we  hear,  taught  of  two 
substances,  mind  and  matter,  precisely  as  if  he 
had  seen  and  counted'  them,  could,  Madame  de 
Stael  has  said,  distinguish  between  right  and 
wrong  as  readily  as  between  blue  and  yellow. 
But  is  abuse  evidence?  Besides,  women  are 
sad  gossips.  Hell  is  paved  with  their  tongues. 
Moreover,  when  the  remark  was  made  Descartes 
was  too  dead  to  defend  himself  against  any 
accusation  of  omniscience. 

Yet  everything  being  possible,  and  assuming 
that  the  lady  told  the  truth,  in  what  did  this 
power  exist?  Surely  it  was  not  Madame  de 
StaeTs  intention  to  represent  Descartes  as  being 
so  wise  that  he  knew,  did  he  go  home  late  and 
intoxicated,  he  would  set  a  bad  example  to  his 
baby  sister,  for  common-sense  could  have  told 
him  that.  Nor  could  she  have  meant  that 
Descartes'  ability  to  discriminate  consisted  in 
believing  that  whatever  he  said  was  right  and 


THE  SEVENTH  DEVIL  OF  OUR  LADY     57 

whoever  disagreed  with  him  was  wrong,  for 
there  is  nothing  unique  in  that :  it  is  what  we 
all  do.  Oui,  monsieur,  vous  aussi. 

Perhaps,  then,  what  the  lady  meant — pre- 
supposing that  she  meant  anything  and  also  that 
she  told  the  truth — was  that  Descartes  knew 
What's  What.  If  this  supposition  be  correct 
we  have  only  to  inquire  what  is  what,  and  at 
once  the  distinction  between  right  and  wrong 
becomes  approachable  and  the  mystery  of  the 
proprieties  is  dissolved. 

To  do  that  we  have  but  to  determine  what 
attracts,  what  repels,  and  then  co-ordinate  their 
contradictories.  Nothing  could  be  simpler.  But 
here  a  loop  is  needful. 

Clergymen  to  whom  it  has  been  our  privilege 
to  listen  have,  according  to  their  fervour  and 
grammar,  denounced  with  more  or  less  ability 
this  vice  and  that,  forgetful,  or  perhaps  unaware, 
that  the  root  of  all  evil  is  not  original  sin  but 
commonplace  jealousy.  Beside  that  seventh 
devil  the  others  that  were  projected  into  the 
swine  of  the  Gadarenes  must  have  been  benefi- 
cent sprites.  Eliminate  it  from  the  scheme  of 
things  and  war  would  lapse,  greed  as  well, 
discord  ditto,  and  harmony  reign.  In  lieu  of 
the  rivalries  and  strikes,  divorces  and  dances, 


58  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

libels  and  races;  instead  of  the  failures  and 
festivities  and  all  the  seductions,  surprises,  and 
general  surreptitiousness  that  we  read  about 
in  the  papers,  there  would  be  nothing  to  read 
about  at  all,  and  society,  through  sheer  calm, 
would  develop  obesity  of  the  mind. 

However  satisfactory  that  might  be,  jealousy 
is  not  to  be  eliminated.  It  is  part  and  parcel  of 
human  nature.  Regarded  in  the  abstract  it  is 
the  woof  of  every  crime.  Regarded  in  the  con- 
crete it  is  a  tribute  to  our  virtues.  Specifically 
considered  it  is  the  Seventh  Devil  of  Our 
Lady. 

In  cataloguing  it  as  such  studies  and  statistics 
have  necessarily  made  us  aware  that  a  jealous 
woman  can  be  very  tiresome  to  a  man.  But 
statistics  and  studies  have  made  us  equally 
aware  that  when  she  is  not  jealous  it  is  of 
the  man  she  is  tired. 

Jealousy  is  the  barometer  of  a  woman's  heart. 
When  its  manifestations  subside  her  temperature 
is  falling.  When  it  departs  she  is  packing  her 
boxes,  she  is  preparing  to  follow.  For  it  is  the 
corollary  of  her  love  to  doubt,  to  doubt  always, 
to  doubt  in  certainty,  to  doubt  in  conviction,  to 
doubt  with  every  possible  evidence  of  constancy 
under  her  nose.  The  heart  has  logic  that  logic 


THE  SEVENTH  DEVIL  OF  OUR  LADY     59 

does  not  recognise.  Then  also,  though  constancy 
may  be  obvious,  fidelity  is  not  necessarily  so 
clear.  Constancy  may  demonstrate  nothing 
more  than  lack  of  opportunity,  but  fidelity 
always  demonstrates  a  lack  of  imagination. 
And  of  the  vagaries  of  the  imagination  a  lady 
may  be,  and  indeed  should  be,  more  jealous 
than  of  anything  else.  Faces  fade,  but  dreams 
abide. 

There  is,  though,  jealousy  and  jealousy.  There 
is  a  jealousy  that  comes  of  a  lack  of  confidence 
in  another.  There  is  a  jealousy  far  more  discreet 
and  infinitely  more  delicate  that  comes  of  a  lack 
of  confidence  in  oneself.  To  the  student  of 
pathology  either  form  is  interesting,  but  on 
condition  that  the  patient  is  in  skirts.  A  male 
patient  may,  of  course,  be  interesting  also,  but 
not  more  so  than  any  other  dog  in  the  manger. 
The  story  of  Othello  and  Desdemona  is  a  case  in 
point. 

There  was  a  couple  admirably  mated.  The 
one  had  no  manners  and  the  other  no  small 
talk. 

In  spite  of  which,  or  perhaps  precisely  on  that 
account,  their  adventures  are  quite  endearing. 
According  to  Shakespeare,  Othello,  not  content 
with  being  a  blackamoor,  made  a  fuss,  raised  the 


60  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

roof,  and  smothered  Desdemona  with  it.  Shake- 
speare described  the  lady  as  entirely  immaculate. 
Even  had  she  been  otherwise,  the  proceeding 
was,  to  say  the  least,  in  bad  taste.  A  man  of 
decent  breeding  never  sees  or  hears  anything 
that  is  not  intended  for  him.  Moreover,  had  any 
smothering  seemed  necessary,  it  was  himself  he 
should  have  asphyxiated.  Yet  bad  taste  always 
leads  to  crime,  and  to  such  vulgar  forms  of  it  at 
that.  Nowadays,  of  course,  men  do  not  murder 
their  wives,  at  anyrate  in  polite  society.  But 
some  of  them  do  worse.  They  institute  uncivil 
proceedings.  There  are,  though,  others  of  finer 
sensibilities  who  collaborate  with  their  dear 
departed  in  an  effort  to  observe  the  amenities 
of  life,  while  agreeing  that  individual  tastes 
shall  suffer  no  interference.  C*est  dun  pur. 

Shakespeare  to  the  contrary,  we  have  reason 
to  suspect  that  Othello  was  a  man  of  just  that 
highmindedness.  Shakespeare,  it  will  be  re- 
membered, made  the  brute  a  Moor.  Personally, 
we  do  not  know  much  about  Moors,  but  for 
purposes  dramatic  we  assume  that  anything, 
even  to  goodness,  may,  at  a  pinch,  be  expected  of 
them.  It  now  appears  that  Othello  was  not  a 
Moor  but  a  patrician.  Indifference  is  a  patrician 
trait.  Of  that,  however,  more  by-and-by.  The 


THE  SEVENTH  DEVIL  OF  OUR  LADY  61 

point  is  the  sudden  discovery  that  Othello  was 
less  black  than  he  was  painted.  Les  Maures  vont 
vite. 

The  discovery  came  about  in  this  fashion. 
Recently  a  palace  situated  in  that  quarter  of 
Venice,  known  as  the  San  Maria  Formosa,  was 
demolished.  From  the  rafters  documents  fell. 
Collected  and  collated,  it  was  found  that  they 
contained  a  chronicle  of  the  final  years  of  Ven- 
etian dominion  over  Candia.  It  was  found,  too, 
that  in  them  Don  Othello  was  mentioned  as  the 
last  governor  of  the  island.  It  was  found,  also, 
that  he  was  a  man  of  rank.  The  documents, 
continuing,  showed  that  after  his  marriage  to 
Desdemona  they  proceeded  to  Candia ;  that  later, 
the  island  being  besieged  by  the  Turks,  Desde- 
mona returned  alone  to  Venice ;  that  there  she 
met  another,  a  dearer  one  yet,  a  third,  perhaps  a 
fourth;  that  in  each  instance  sa  forte  fut  sa 
faiblesse;  that  ultimately,  Candia  having  fallen 
also,  Othello  supervened ;  that  undonesquely  he 
beat  her,  subsequently  concluded  to  die,  and 
that  for  years  thereafter  the  consolable  Desde- 
mona resided  in  that  casa  on  the  Grand  Canal 
which  to-day  every  gondolier  points  out  with  an 
"Ecco!" 

These  facts,  disencumbered  for  the  purposes  of 


62  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

the  present  paper  from  layers  of  detail,  were  not 
long  since  given  to  the  world  by  the  official  who 
in  Italy  occupies  the  position  of  Minister  of 
Instruction.  Although  they  are  too  good  to  be 
true,  we  will  assume  that  they  are  exact — all, 
indeed,  except  the  undonesque  greeting  which 
Desdemona  received,  for  that,  if  the  other  facts 
be  accepted,  seems  highly  problematic.  Our 
reasons  for  so  regarding  it  are  brief. 

The  gossip  about  Desdemona  originally  ap- 
peared in  a  now  forgotten  novel.  Cinthio,  the 
author  of  it,  was  an  early  Bourget,  an  earlier 
Balzac.  For  literary  purposes  he  went  about 
here  and  there  collecting  scandals,  which  he  set 
up  in  black  and  white.  In  default  of  linen  from 
his  neighbour  sometimes  he  washed  his  own.  In 
a  pretty  woman  he  saw  not  her  eyes  but  a  plot, 
and  from  her  heart  he  proceeded  to  dig  it.  It 
was  in  the  observance  of  this  process  that  the 
story  of  Desdemona  appeared.  That  the  author 
was  acquainted  with  her  husband  is  presumable, 
but  whether  he  collaborated  with  the  young 
woman  in  any  of  her  inconsequences  we  may 
surmise  yet  never  know.  According  to  his  story, 
however,  Othello  was  a  brave  young  soldier  of 
colour,  the  glitter  of  whose  exploits  awoke 
Desdemona's  love  and  won  for  him  the  command 


THE  SEVENTH  DEVIL  OF  OUR  LADY  63 

of  the  Candian  troops.  The  two  are  married 
and  embark  for  the  post.  With  them  go  an 
ensign  and  a  corporal.  The  ensign  makes  up  to 
the  lady.  He  is  repulsed.  The  emotions  she  has 
inspired  addle  into  rage.  The  ensign  recites  to 
Othello  that  his  bride  is  an  abandoned  creature 
and  that  the  corporal  is  assisting  in  her  abandon. 
Othello  bribes  him  to  kill  the  corporal.  The 
ensign  slashes  the  poor  devil  in  the  leg.  Then 
Othello  takes  a  hand ;  he  takes  a  sand-bag,  too, 
and  pounds  the  lady  with  it  until  she  gives  up 
the  ghost. 

Barring  the  climax,  which  we  assume  to  be 
literary,  the  rest  of  the  story  coincides  tolerably 
well  with  the  documents  recently  found.  But 
here  is  the  objection.  Cinthio's  novel  appeared 
in  1565.  Shakespeare's  rendition  of  it  was  pro- 
duced in  1604.  The  capture  of  Candia  occurred 
in  1669.  As  a  consequence,  if,  as  we  assume,  the 
facts  produced  by  the  Minister  of  Instruction  are 
exact,  Othello  on  his  return  from  Candia  could 
not  have  been  less  than  one  hundred  and  twenty- 
five,  and  Desdemona  must  have  been  at  least  a 
hundred  and  ten.  At  an  age  so  mature  one 
may  fancy  that  all  her  wild  oats  had  been  sown, 
and,  even  otherwise,  Othello  must  have  been  too 
feeble  to  beat  her  and  too  indifferent  to  care. 


64  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

Indifference  is  a  great  aid  to  the  maintenance 
of  the  proprieties.  It  is  more  conducive  to 
harmony  than  anything  we  can  cite.  It  is,  as 
we  have  noted,  a  trait  quite  patrician.  Ob- 
viously then,  however  young  or  old  the  Othello 
recently  discovered  may  have  been,  he  would 
have  patricianly  neglected  to  see  or  hear  any- 
thing that  was  not  intended  for  him,  and  by 
the  same  token  he  would  have  omitted  to  raise 
the  roof.  In  order  to  induce  him  to  do  so  both 
novelist  and  playwright  were  forced  to  twist 
him  into  a  Moor,  and  as  such  capable  of  jealousy 
that  a  patrician  might  feel  but  not  exhibit. 
Jealousy  is  the  basis  of  every  affection,  whether 
maternal,  paternal,  filial,  sororal,  connubial,  or 
even  patrician.  It  is,  therefore,  a  natural  emotion. 
In  the  case  of  a  woman  it  is  not  merely  natural, 
it  is  occasionally  attractive.  But  emotions  that 
may  be  attractive  in  women  are  always  repellent 
in  men. 

Here  then,  at  once,  if  our  illustrations  have 
been  serviceable,  we  are  back  again  in  the 
contradictories  from  which  we  started.  The 
deductions  that  ensue  follow  almost  of  them- 
selves. For  it  must  be  patent  that,  whether 
or  not  Desdemona  was  lacking  in  certain  circum- 
spections, whether  or  not  Othello  was  jealous ; 


THE  SEVENTH  DEVIL  OF  OUR  LADY  65 

whether,  indeed,  as  may  have  been  and  prob- 
ably was  the  case,  the  lady  herself  was 
possessed  of  the  seventh  devil  and  through 
the  process  of  its  manifestations  drove  Othello 
first  to  drink  and  then  to  derision,  in  any 
event,  their  reciprocal  attitudes  were  not  con- 
ducive to  harmony. 

Harmony  is  that  which  always  has  appealed 
and  always  will  appeal  to  civilisation.  It  is 
Nature's  first  law,  the  truest  of  her  vocables. 
In  the  form  of  Beauty,  which  is  its  outward 
and  visible  sign,  it  has  been  an  object  of 
worship  since  worship  began.  Its  exponents 
were  singers  and  seers.  It  was  Harmony  that 
Hermes  taught,  it  was  beauty  that  the  Buddha 
preached.  Civilisation  is  in  love  with  it  and 
at  odds  with  discord. 

If,  therefore,  our  deductions  be  worth  a  row 
of  pins,  it  follows  that  the  test  of  an  action 
is  its  beauty  or  the  lack  of  it,  that  according 
as  it  conduces  to  harmony  or  discord,  according 
as  it  is  capable  of  attracting  or  repelling,  so 
is  it  moral  or  the  reverse.  In  view  of  these 
premises  it  becomes  permissible  to  transfer 
virtue  from  ethics  to  esthetics  and  to  regard 
the  proprieties  as  functions  of  art. 

And  why  not?  Life,  as  conducted  to-day,  is 
E 


66  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

at  its  best  either  ridiculously  vulgar  or  snob- 
bishly absurd.  Society,  which  used  to  sin  and 
sparkle,  now  simply  sins.  There  is  modern  pro- 
gress for  you,  and  a  progress  induced  wholly 
by  a  misunderstanding  of  What's  What,  com- 
plicated by  the  presence  of  that  seventh  devil, 
from  which  all  evil  proceeds. 


VI 
DE   L'AMOUR 

IT  is  said  of  somebody  somewhere  that  he  be- 
came Poet  Laureate  because  he  lived  on  very 
good  terms  with  his  wife.  That  is  certainly 
poetic.  So  also  is  the  result.  It  constitutes  a 
fine  case  of  what  a  boulevardier  might — if  he 
thought  of  it — describe  as  lauriat  mediocritas. 
Moreover,  it  shows,  or  seems  to  show,  that  con- 
nubial virtues  are  more  estimable  than  literary 
sins.  That  is  quite  as  it  should  be.  But  the 
converse  of  the  proposition  is  equally  true. 
Domestic  difficulties  are  preferable  to  halting 
hexameters.  The  world  is  filled  with  good 
husbands.  Good  verse  is  more  scant.  For  that 
matter,'  the  better  the  verse  the  worse  the 
husband.  An  ideal  spouse  would  be  both  a 
perfect  lover  and  a  perfect  poet.  But  no  mere 
mortal  has  succeeded  in  being  both,  for  any 
length  of  time  at  least;  and  very  naturally 

too.     The  Muse  is  highly  jealous.     The  task  of 

67 


68  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

serving  two  masters  is  nothing  to  having  two 
mistresses  on  your  hands. 

These  views  have,  we  fear,  a  false  air  of 
originality.  But  we  claim  no  copyright  on 
them.  They  have  been  running  about  the 
bookshelves  ever  since  books  were  shelved. 
Said  Michelangelo :  "  Art  is  wife  enough  for 
me."  Said  Flaubert:  "However  refractory  the 
Muse  may  be,  she  is  better  than  any  woman." 
Said  Bacon:  "Matrimony  is  an  impediment  to 
great  enterprises."  Kant,  Newton,  Beethoven, 
Descartes,  Spinoza,  Leibnitz,  Gibbon,  Macaulay, 
Handel,  Mendelssohn,  Meyerbeer,  Camoens,  Vol- 
taire, Cavour,  and  Mr  Dooley  appear  to  have 
agreed  with  him.  In  such  fine  company  we 
may  not  presume  to  intrude.  But  we  are  quite 
sure  that  there  are  plenty  of  people  who  long 
for  heaven,  if  for  no  other  reason  than  because 
there  is  no  marrying  or  giving  in  marriage 
there.  We  have  not  a  doubt  but  that  while 
Mrs  Carlyle  was  among  us  she  felt  pretty  much 
that  way  too.  We  have  not  a  doubt  but  that 
Mrs  Donizetti  did  also.  For  Donizetti  used  to 
get  very  indignant  at  that  lady,  which  was  not 
philosophic,  and  occasionally  beat  her,  which 
was  certainly  not  polite.  Even  so,  the  exercise 
must  have  been  good  for  him.  One  day,  five 


DE  L'AMOUE  69 

minutes  after  laying  her  out,  he  composed  the 
"  Tu  che  a  Dio"  an  aria  which  a  seraph  might 
envy — the  most  bewitching  in  the  entire  Italian 
repertory,  and  which  anyone  who  has  heard 
the  last  act  of  "Lucia"  will  recall.  Exercise  of 
a  similar  nature  Byron  took  with  his  little 
Guiccioli,  and  with  proper  poetic  results.  One 
of  the  liveliest  scenes  in  "Les  Trois  Mous- 
quetaires"  was  evolved  by  Dumas  just  after 
he  had  torn  hair  by  the  handful  from  the 
head  of  a  young  person  who  honoured  him 
with  her  affection.  "Were  her  tears  but 
pearls,"  he  announced,  "I  would  make  a  neck- 
lace of  them." 

These  incidents  happened  a  long  time  ago, 
and  fail  to  stir  us  very  deeply.  They  do  not 
demonstrate  much,  either,  and  what  they  do 
it  would  not  be  honest  to  print.  But,  in  con- 
junction with  others,  they  lead  us  to  assume  a 
few  little  things  ;  for  instance,  that  had  Petrarch 
got  as  close  to  Laura  as  he  wished,  he  would 
have  maltreated  her,  or  the  Muse  would  have 
maltreated  him.  We  assume,  with  equal  ease, 
that  had  Beatrice  been  a  reality  instead  of  a 
dream,  the  world  would  be  minus  a  volume  or 
two  of  good  verse.  We  assume,  with  equal 
readiness,  that  had  the  affairs  of  Ariosto  been  as 


70  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

immaterial,  the  world  would  be  plus  a  volume 
or  two  which  it  lacks. 

"The  position  of  lover,"  said  Byron,  "is  not  a 
sinecure."  Nor  is  it.  There  are  times  and  oc- 
casions when  it  is  hard  labour.  It  is  a  position 
suited  only  to  the  mentally  idle.  In  the  life 
known  as  cerebral  it  stultifies  when  it  does 
not  wreck.  Consider  Sappho.  Because  a  little 
mucker  preferred  another  mouth  to  hers  she 
killed  herself.  And  consider  Antony.  Because 
of  a  viper  of  the  Nile  he  flung  away  the 
sovereignty  of  half  the  world.  Abelard  should 
have  known  better  than  to  behave  as  he  did. 
On  the  other  hand,  had  he  omitted  to,  his 
name  would  be  the  echo  of  nothing  and  that 
of  Heloi'se  be  lost.  Such  is  fame. 

Such,  too,  is  the  fame  of  Tasso.  His  verse  is 
less  interesting  than  his  woes.  The  latter  were 
quite  poignant.  Goethe  wrote  a  play  about 
them,  Donizetti  an  opera,  and  Delacroix  added 
a  picture.  The  picture  represents  the  poet  in 
prison.  That  is  a  fine  place  for  a  gentleman. 
But  Tasso,  instead  of  confining  himself,  as  he 
should  have  done,  to  the  raising  of  anapests 
and  rime  amorose,  found,  in  the  wide  leisures  of 
the  court  of  Ferrara,  nothing  better  to  do  than 
to  make  up  to  Leonore  of  Este.  The  lady  did 


DE  L'AMOUR  71 

not  object.  On  the  contrary.  But  her  brother, 
the  Duke  of  Ferrara,  did.  By  way  of  putting 
a  stop  to  the  proceedings  he  had  Tasso  tossed 
into  a  madhouse.  Whether  or  not  the  honour 
of  the  lady  was  at  stake  is  a  detail,  immaterial 
at  that.  There  are  women  who  discredit  virtue 
in  affecting  to  possess  it.  We  have  not  a  doubt 
that  Leonore  was  one  of  them.  Even  so,  and 
even  otherwise,  we  do  not  blame  the  duke.  We 
have  noted  before,  and  perhaps  may  be  per- 
mitted to  note  again,  that  there  is  nothing  so 
perversive  as  a  young  poet,  except  an  old  one. 
How  perversive  Tasso  succeeded  in  becoming 
we  may  surmise  and  never  know.  What  we  do 
know  is  that  he  got  what  he  deserved.  He 
ought  to  have  left  all  that  sort  of  thing  to  her. 
In  the  case  of  an  ordinary  individual  we  should, 
of  course,  strum  a  different  guitar.  Ordinary 
individuals  are  free  to  do  as  they  like,  and  be 
hanged  to  them.  But  the  thinker  has  a  mission. 
For  the  furtherance  of  that  mission  every  ex- 
traneous desire  and  each  subsidiary  whim  should 
be  locked  in  cages,  where,  for  the  fun  of  the 
thing,  now  and  then  he  may  be  permitted  to  go 
and  see  how  they  are.  Women  should  be  to 
him  the  joujoux  they  used  to  be  and  not  the 
objets  de  luxe  they  have  become.  Better  still, 


72  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

he  should  have  everything,  even  to  sex,  in  his 
brain. 

Seraglios  are  delightful  to  read  about  and 
particularly  to  write  about,  but  to  live  in  them 
must  be  deadly  dull.  Personally,  we  have  never 
tried  it.  It  is  true  we  have  lacked  the  oppor- 
tunity. Otherwise  we  should  doubtless  jump 
at  the  chance.  But  then,  thank  the  Lord,  we 
have  no  mission.  It  is  a  great  thing  to  be  an 
ordinary  individual.  Le  metier  de  poete  laisse  ci 
dtfsirer.  Just  how  much  the  business  of  poet 
leaves  to  be  desired  it  would  take  the  ghost  of 
Tasso  to  tell,  of  de  Musset,  too,  of  Byron  as 
well.  There  are  three  whom  the  love  of  woman 
has  led  from  deserts  of  disgust  into  oases  of 
ennui.  There  are  three  whose  genius  women 
have  slaughtered.  It  is  only  that  we  may  not 
seem  to  know  more  than  we  do  that  we  refrain 
from  citing  three  hundred.  Yet,  while  we  are 
at  it,  there  is  a  case  so  pertinent,  so  recent,  and 
so  picturesque,  that  it  would  be  a  shame  to  let 
it  go.  Here  it  is. 

During  the  Third  Empire  a  young  man  ap- 
peared at  the  Tuileries.  Eugenie  kissed  him, 
and  in  the  process  declared  him  to  be  the 
handsomest  prince  in  the  world.  At  the  com- 
pliment the  young  man  blushed,  and  blushed 


DE  L' AMOUR  73 

still  more  at  the  embrace.  His  name  was 
Ludwig.  By  profession  he  was  king.  In  ad- 
dition, he  followed  the  entirely  genteel  avoca- 
tion of  lover.  But  en  amateur  merely.  He 
had  yet  to  learn  that  the  art  of  loving  and 
the  art  of  being  loved  are  separate  and  dis- 
tinct. It  was  his  cousin  who  taught  him.  This 
young  woman,  afterwards  Duchesse  d'Alenc.on, 
lived  in  the  heart  of  a  Bavarian  forest.  A 
poet  who  chanced  to  encounter  her  there  has 
related  that  he  mistook  her  for  a  sylph — one 
of  those  enchanting  apparitions  that  dwelt  in 
dim  green  woods  and  long  German  ballads, 
and  whom  princes  used  to  woo.  Ludwig  mis- 
took her  for  a  saint.  To  err,  poets  and  princes 
are  liable  alike. 

There  is,  a  thinker  announced,  as  much  mud 
in  the  upper  classes  as  in  the  lower,  only,  he 
added,  in  the  former  it  is  gilded.  In  the  case  of 
the  young  woman  Ludwig  appears  to  have 
discovered  the  mud,  but  with  the  gilt  off  and 
the  guilt  on.  Yet  not,  of  course,  at  once.  Mean- 
while the  girl  intended  no  wrong,  and  that,  per- 
haps, because  she  never  would  have  considered 
wrong  anything  she  wished  to  do.  Moreover, 
she  was  very  pretty,  and  pretty  girls  have  more 
incentives  than  those  who  are  not.  Then,  too, 


74  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

she  had  another  excuse.  It  had  been  pre- 
dicted that  she  would  be  burned  alive.  No 
one  believes  much  in  predictions  unless  Time 
comes  along  and  verifies  them.  In  her  case 
Time  did.  A  few  years  ago  she  was  caught  in 
the  fire  that  occurred  in  the  Paris  Bazaar. 
With  a  fate  such  as  that  before  her  it  may  be 
she  tried  to  make  the  most  of  the  worst.  If 
the  supposition  be  correct,  her  success  was 
remarkable.  She  ruined  her  life  and  that  of 
her  lover  as  well. 

Ludwig  looked  as  if  he  had  stepped  from  a 
fairy  tale.  As  he  looked  he  acted.  He  charmed 
peasants  and  empresses.  He  suggested  romance 
incarnate  and  enthroned.  These  suggestions 
his  cousin  lived  to  see  him  change  into  realities. 
She  lived  to  see  him  dot  the  country  he  ruled 
with  palaces  of  enchantment.  She  lived,  too,  to 
see  him  hide  himself  in  them.  She  lived  to  see 
the  handsomest  prince  in  the  world  change  into 
a  bloated  sot.  She  lived  to  realise  that  it  was 
her  work,  and,  so  realising,  perhaps  was  glad  to 
die.  For,  if  not  a  saint,  at  least  she  was  human. 
When  ultimately,  in  cups  of  champagne  strained 
through  violets,  he  tried  to  drown  his  reason, 
she  lost  her  own.  Subsequently,  as  noted,  she 
lost  her  life.  It  may  be  that  it  was  fate  that 


DE  L' AMOUR  75 

felled  her,  yet  in  that  case  it  is  a  pity  that  fate 
was  so  slow.  Had  it  but  throttled  her  in  the 
cradle,  or  smothered  her  in  the  green  and  quiet 
of  the  slumbrous  wood,  Europe  might  have 
enjoyed  the  spectacle  of  an  ideal  king  reigning 
ideally.  But  the  discovery  that  the  girl  who  had 
imparadised  his  heart  was  no  better  than  the 
law  allows  transformed  Lohengrin  into  Hamlet. 
He  turned  his  back  on  her,  and  incidentally  on 
the  world.  There  developed  within  him  a  horror 
of  being  seen.  At  Munich  a  mechanical  device 
enabled  him  to  be  served  by  invisible  hands. 
When  he  drove  it  was  at  night.  Now  and  again 
he  disappeared  entirely.  No  one  knew  where 
he  was.  Infrequently  he  received  at  dinner. 
The  guest  whom  he  preferred  was  Louis  XIY. 
With  him  he  was  quite  at  home.  The  royal 
phantom  came  and  went  at  his  bidding.  Yet 
that  which  pleased  him  most  was  to  stroll, 
crowned  and  sceptred,  through  the  splendidly 
lighted  halls  of  Herrenchiemsee  and  people  the 
empty  rooms  with  the  great  poets  and  princes 
of  the  past.  With  these,  too,  he  was  at  home 
and  every  inch  the  king,  King  of  the  Kingdom 
of  Beauty  and  of  Dreams — of  Chastity,  too,  for 
never  once  was  the  mystic  music  with  which 
he  flooded  those  mystic  halls  broken  by  the 


76  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

discord  of  a  woman's  voice.  His  cousin  had 
cured  him  of  that.  Et  voila  ce  que  cest  que 
V  Amour. 

After  the  episode  with  this  lady  the  life  of 
Ludwig  of  Bavaria  was  a  long  anachronism, 
but  a  very  beautiful  one,  marred  only  by  the 
insanity  that  overtook  him  in  the  end.  That 
insanity  was  in  the  family.  His  brother  is 
mad  as  a  hatter,  and  his  grandfather  lost 
over  Lola  Montez  the  few  wits  that  he  had. 
Behind  these  people,  back  through  the  chron- 
icles of  the  House  of  Wittelsbach,  there  are 
chapters  choked  with  crime,  scenes  smeared 
with  sin,  a  story  of  calamity  singularly 
straight,  one  in  which  other  descendants, 
notably  the  Empress  of  Austria  and  her  son 
Rudolph,  had  their  undoubted  share.  For  the 
purposes  of  this  paragraph  it  would  be  con- 
venient to  assume  that  there  is  a  curse  on 
the  clan.  And  if  there  be,  that  curse  is  love. 
In  any  event,  it  is  the  cause  of  their  dementia. 
But  then,  apart  from  gold,  is  not  love  the 
cause  of  every  folly  that  has  occurred  since 
the  days  when,  for  Helen's  sake,  the  war  of 
the  world  was  fought  ?  Truly,  when  you  come 
to  sit  down  and  think  it  over,  or  even,  as  we 
do,  stand  up  and  dictate,  the  panorama  of  un- 


DE  L' AMOUR  77 

hallowed  disasters  that  unrolls  does  not  make 
one  much  in  love  with  love. 

Yet  though,  like  gold,  it  has  its  defects;  like 
gold,  too,  it  has  its  charms.  Every  reputable 
writer  has  denounced  it  and  disreputably  en- 
joyed all  he  could  get.  To  say  one  thing  and 
mean  something  else  happens  to  all,  even  to 
the  best.  But  the  main  point  about  it,  and 
which,  as  such,  we  have  left  to  the  last,  is 
the  fact  that  concerning  it  doctors  disagree. 
That,  however,  is  natural  enough.  Love  has 
a  hundred  symptoms,  a  thousand  phases.  It 
may  come  at  first  sight — which  does  not  mean 
second  sight.  It  may  come  from  propinquity 
and  also  from  the  lack  of  it.  The  less  we 
see  of  people  the  more  delightful  they  appear. 
It  may  come  of  curiosity,  which  is  the  in- 
stinct of  self-improvement.  It  may  come  of 
sympathy,  which  is  the  pleasure  we  take  in 
the  unhappiness  of  someone  else.  It  may 
come  of  antipathy,  for  in  every  affection  there 
is  the  germ  of  hate.  It  may  come  of  mutual 
attraction.  That  is  very  common.  It  may 
come  of  natural  selection.  That  is  very  rare. 

Natural  selection  presupposes  a  discernment 
that  leads  a  man  through  mazes  of  women  to 
one  woman  in  particular,  to  the  woman  who  to 


78  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

him  is  the  one  woman  in  all  the  world,  to  the 
woman  who  has  been  awaiting  him  and  who 
recognises  him  when  he  comes.  And  it  is  just 
because  the  process  is  exceptional  that  doctors 
disagree,  husbands  and  wives  also,  sweethearts 
and  swains  as  well,  poets  and  princesses  too. 
Therein  lies  the  root  of  the  disasters  that  it  has 
given  us  a  real  pleasure  to  relate.  It  is,  indeed, 
a  pleasant  subject.  But  it  is  one  that  would 
have  perplexed  Euclid,  and  for  all  we  know  to 
the  contrary,  doubtless  did.  The  more  abun- 
dantly it  is  written  about  the  more  abundant 
does  ignorance  appear.  For  love  is  one  of  those 
phenomena  which  elude  exact  knowledge.  A 
huckster  of  phrases  thought  he  summed  it 
up  in  denning  it  as  the  Why  and  Wherefore 
of  Creation.  Another  huckster  nauseatingly 
labelled  it  the  sweetest  shape  of  pain. 

Everything  being  possible,  it  may  be  either 
and  even  both.  Yet  studies  and  statistics  have 
rather  inclined  us  to  the  theory  that,  apart 
from  pathological  conditions,  love  is  either  the 
affection  of  somebody  else  or  else  the  fusion  of 
two  egotisms,  the  contact  of  two  epiderms,  the 
tragedy  of  those  that  lack  it,  the  boredom  of 
those  that  don't,  and  in  this  country  the  prime 
incentive  to  matrimony,  which  also  studies  and 


DE  L' AMOUR  79 

statistics  have  led  us  to  regard  as  three  months 
of  adoration,  three  months  of  introspection,  and 
thirty  years  of  toleration,  with  the  children  to 
begin  it  all  over  anew.  Et  voild,  ce  que  cest  que 
r  Amour. 


VII 
THE   TOILET   OF   VENUS 

BBUMMEL  liked  his  smartness  unperfumed. 
"  The  linen  of  a  man  of  fashion  smells,  sir," 
said  he,  "  but  of  the  open."  The  remark,  a 
paradox  then,  has  become  a  platitude  since. 
As  with  men  of  fashion,  so  with  women. 
Cologne  water  has  been  abandoned  to  ladies' 
maids  and  extracts  double-distilled  to  shop- 
girls. To-day  the  most  modish  perfume  is  health. 
The  next  best  is  a  suspicion  of  orris.  Occasion- 
ally one  encounters  a  suggestion  of  lilacs  that 
are  far  away.  The  farther  away  the  better.  In 
smart  life  these  represent  the  gamut.  Anything 
more  florid  jars.  In  Brummel's  day,  and  during 
its  many  morrows,  the  use  which  fine  people 
made  of  patchouli  was  nothing  less  than  dis- 
solute. They  had  a  love  for  millefleurs  which 
we  can  only  qualify  as  depraved.  The  epoch  has 
gone,  thank  fortune,  and  may  it  never  return. 

It  was  a  matter  of  taste,  no  doubt,  but  it  was  all 

80 


THE  TOILET  OF  VENUS  81 

so  bad.  The  farther  back  memory  wanders  the 
worse  it  gets. 

Consider  the  lilies  of  the  field!  There  is  a 
spectacle  simple  and  sedate.  Its  elements  do 
not  figure  in  the  perfumery  of  Judaea.  Said 
Solomon :  "  My  beloved  is  unto  me  as  a  cluster 
of  camphire  in  the  vineyards  of  Engedi."  A 
cluster  being  insufficient,  he  added  a  mountain 
of  myrrh,  a  hill  of  frankincense,  an  orchard  of 
pomegranates,  spikenard  and  saffron,  calamus 
and  cinnamon.  The  beloved  became  a  con- 
servatory— sultry,  sticky,  and  soporific  at  that, 
and  yet,  we  assume,  entirely  symbolic.  Even 
so  the  beloved  was  alluring  beside  the  vision 
which  Muhammad  evoked. 

Hell  is  certainly  paved  with  women's  tongues. 
But  Paradise,  as  mapped  in  the  Koran,  is  floored 
with  musk.  It  is  with  musk  that  houris  are 
garmented.  That,  however  unnatural,  is  natural 
enough.  Muhammad,  afflicted  with  hysteria  mus- 
cularis — the  only  disease,  parenthetically,  which 
ever  founded  a  religion — intercepted  in  his 
hallucinatory  trances,  and  afterward  detained, 
reminiscences  of  anterior  worship.  In  days 
when  the  world  went  slower  the  young  altars 
of  the  old  gods  were  splendid  with  aromatics. 
At  the  shrines  of  long  ago,  in  the  temples  of 
F 


82  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

Bel,  in  the  crypts  of  Memphis,  in  the  sanctuaries 
of  Jerusalem,  everything  sacred  was  scented. 
Perfumes,  it  was  believed,  not  merely  pleasured 
the  gods  ;  it  was  believed  that  they  were  tokens 
of  their  presence.  Witness  Aphrodite.  How- 
ever humid  her  breast  may  be  with  the  salt  of 
the  sea,  always  she  brings  with  her  a  whiff  of 
ambrosia.  So  it  was  with  Isis.  The  atmosphere 
in  which  she  dwelt  was  charged  by  her  divinity 
with  fragrance.  In  appealing  to  her  perfume 
and  prayer  mounted  conjointly,  and  the  more 
readily  because  of  the  conjunction. 

The  circumstance  is  worth  noting.  It  eluci- 
dates obscurities  of  Muhammad,  of  Solomon, 
too,  and  helps  to  an  understanding  of  the  real 
significance  of  perfumes.  But  we  will  come  to 
that  in  a  minute.  Meanwhile  we  may  offer  a 
conundrum :  What  were  the  charms  of  Circe  ? 
Ovid  told,  but  his  work,  like  many  another,  was 
turned  into  palimpsests.  There  let  it  rest.  We 
have  something  as  good.  It  is  a  treatise  by 
Apollonius,  a  historian  of  whom  we  know  so 
little  that  it  is  idle  to  attempt  to  know  less. 
Yet  what  we  don't  know  of  him  he  knew  of 
Circe.  The  witcheries  of  the  wicked  enchantress 
were  entirely  apothecary.  It  was  the  old  lady's 
habit  to  apply  to  each  part  of  the  body  a 


THE  TOILET  OF  VENUS  83 

different  variety  of  unguent.  The  effect,  novel 
in  itself,  delighted  Ulysses,  and,  surviving  the 
years,  became  fashionable  in  less  legendary  life. 

Smart  Athenians  perfumed  the  hair  with 
marjoram  and  the  brows  with  an  essence  of 
apples.  The  arms  were  rubbed  with  mint,  the 
knees  with  ground  ivy.  Baccaris,  an  extract  of 
crocus,  was  put  on  the  soles  of  the  feet,  and 
rhubarb  on  the  fingers.  They  used  these  things, 
others  as  well.  They  painted  the  face  with 
white  lead,  the  lips  with  alkanet,  the  eyelids 
with  kohl,  and  the  nails  with  henna.  The 
recipes,  regarded  as  common  property,  were 
inscribed  on  marble  in  the  temples  of  ^3scu- 
lapius.  The  custom  is  citable.  Fine  folk  wished 
not  merely  to  look  fine;  they  wished  every- 
body to  look  fine  also. 

The  wish  was  not  limited  to  them.  It  pre- 
occupied the  legislature. 

At  that  time  a  woman  who  presumed  to  be 
out  of  the  fashion,  whose  peplon,  for  instance, 
did  not  hang  right  in  the  back,  or  whose  general 
appearance  was  not  modish,  there  and  then 
became  a  disturber  of  the  peace,  and  as  such 
liable  to  a  fine,  which  varied,  with  degrees  of 
slatternliness,  from  ten  to  a  thousand  drachmae. 
Those,  indeed,  were  the  good  old  days. 


84  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

There  were  others,  however,  particularly  in 
Rome,  where  individual  smartness  was  loved  as 
never  before  and,  except  sporadically,  as  never 
since.  Perfumes  there  were  not  limited  to  the 
person.  The  tunics  of  men  of  fashion  were 
elaborately  scented.  So,  also,  were  their  baths, 
their  beds,  their  horses,  their  dogs,  and  the  walls 
of  their  houses.  Melinum  was  one  of  the  odours 
most  in  favour.  Made  of  quinces,  it  came  in 
three  forms — liquid,  solid,  and  powdered.  There 
were  yet  richer  perfumes.  One  much  affected  in 
high  life  consisted  of  twenty-seven  ingredients, 
and  cost,  in  our  money,  about  a  hundred  dollars 
a  pound.  Nothing  earthly  would  induce  us  to 
have  a  grain  of  it  about  us. 

Another  scent  was  saffron.  As  an  essence  it 
streamed  through  entertainments.  At  dinners 
where  guests  lay,  fanned  by  boys  whose  curly 
hair  they  used  for  napkins,  a  preparation  of  it 
was  found  serviceable  in  neutralising  the  fumes 
of  wine.  Perfumes  then  offered  possibilities  in 
debauches,  in  cruelty,  too,  with  which,  unhappily, 
we  are  unacquainted.  Caligula  spent  a  fortune 
on  unguents.  He  waded  in  them.  Such  was  the 
joy  of  Nero  at  the  death  of  his  wife  that  he  had 
more  incense  burned  than  Arabia  could  re- 
produce in  a  decade.  Heliogabalus  asked  a  lot 


THE  TOILET  OF  VENUS  85 

of  people  to  dinner,  and  from  panels  in  the 
ceiling  had  such  masses  of  aromatics  fall  on 
them  that  before  they  could  escape  they  were 
smothered.  We  are  not  making  this  up.  The 
carouse  is  down  in  Lampridus.  It  is  true,  he 
may  have  invented  it;  but  that  we  doubt. 
Lampridus  was  not  imaginative,  and  Helio- 
gabalus  was.  That  painted  boy,  who  looked  like 
a  dissolute  girl,  and  who,  to  the  Romans,  con- 
trived to  be  both  emperor  and  empress,  had 
perfumes  that  were  poisons.  He  got  them  from 
the  curious  East,  whence  he  came. 

The  odour  of  one  of  them  perverted  the  imag- 
ination, stained  the  thoughts,  and  depraved  the 
mind.  It  turned  conceptions  of  wrong  into  right 
and  made  the  unholy  adorable.  It  set  men  mad 
and  made  women  hide  themselves  in  the  Tiber. 
It  smelled  as  purple  looks.  In  certain  seraglios 
and  ceremonies  of  the  Orient  it  is  rumoured  to  be 
detectable  still.  But  we  must  not  believe  every 
thing  we  hear.  In  any  event,  it  is  not  used  on 
Fifth  Avenue.  That,  though,  is  a  detail.  The 
point  is  that  there  never  was  a  place  so  scented 
as  the  splendid  city  of  the  Caesars.  Not  merely 
did  men,  women,  and  animals  come  in  for  their 
share,  but  the  victorious  standards  of  the 
victorious  legions,  which  dripped  with  blood, 


86  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

dripped,  too,  with  perfume.  The  purple  sails  of 
the  jewelled  galleys  were  perfumed.  In  the 
colossal  delight  of  the  amphitheatre,  where, 
beneath  a  canopy  of  spangled  silk,  a  thousand 
musicians  answered  the  roar  of  beasts  and  the 
cries  of  the  multitude  with  the  kiss  of  flutes,  the 
hum  of  harps,  and  the  blare  of  brass,  at  stated 
intervals  there  rained  from  the  terraces  showers 
of  saffron,  of  cinnamon,  and  myrrh.  Those,  too, 
may  be  catalogued  among  the  good  old  days. 

It  was  during  them  that  Venus  managed  to 
be,  if  not  at  her  best,  not  quite  at  her  worst. 
In  years  subsequent  and  sedater  her  toilet 
became  more  substantial,  yet  we  entertain  a 
suspicion  that  what  it  gained  in  texture  it  lost 
in  grace.  The  perfumes  that  she  trailed  through 
Rome  were  not  lasting.  They  faded  with  the 
click-clack  of  her  sandals.  It  took  the  Moors 
to  detain  them.  The  Moors  invented  a  number 
of  things — how  to  whip  Spain,  how  to  make 
rhymes,  how  to  play  checkers,  how  to  give 
serenades,  how  to  do  algebra,  how  to  set  clocks, 
and  how  to  extract  and  preserve  perfumes  by 
means  of  distillation. 

The  process  was  performed  with  an  alembic, 
which  means  a  still.  But  that  bit  of  erudition 
need  not  alarm.  It  has  a  false  air  of  learning 


THE  TOILET  OF  VENUS  87 

which  is  not  in  our  line.  We  have  no  pedantic 
familiarity  with  this  subject  or,  for  that  matter, 
with  any  other.  We  are  able,  at  most,  to  recall 
that  perfumery,  as  understood  to-day,  began  just 
about  then,  and  that  the  fragrance  of  it  was 
first  noticed  when  Salahaddin  flooded  the  floor 
of  Omar's  mosque  with  rose-water. 

The  odour  passed  with  the  Crusaders  through 
Europe.  Its  vogue  was  immediate.  Venus 
promptly  utilised  it  in  her  finger-bowl,  where 
it  must  have  been  serviceable,  for  the  fork  had 
not  yet  come,  and  when  it  did  was  regarded 
as  a  piece  of  great  foppery.  But  that,  too, 
has  a  false  air  of  learning  which  we  despise. 
In  order  that  we  may  not  seem  to  know  more 
than  we  do,  we  will  just  note  that  so  grew  the 
daintiness  of  the  lady  that  presently  she  had 
perfumed  gloves,  perfumed  candles,  perfumed 
bellows,  perfumed  pillows,  and  with  them,  we 
take  it,  perfumed  dreams.  If  the  latter  re- 
sembled the  rest  of  her  batterie  de  cuisine,  they 
must  have  been  nasty  enough.  They  must  have 
been  heavy,  cloying,  and  bitterly  sweet.  Per- 
fumery she  had,  but  not  perfumes.  Even  so, 
she  was  better  off  than  she  had  been  for  a  long 
time  past. 

In  those  dismal  ages  society  stank  vilely.    The 


88  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

very  select  used  balsams  instead  of  baths.  The 
less  select  used  neither.  In  "Much  Ado  About 
Nothing"  Pedro  says  of  Benedick:  "Nay,  he 
rubs  himself  with  civet."  And  the  deduction 
follows:  "The  sweet  youth's  in  love." 

This,  of  course,  occurred  in  days  semi-fabulous 
and  wholly  barbaric.  In  a  later  and  more 
neighbourly  epoch  taste  ran  to  what  was  called 
the  essence  pot — "amber,  musk,  and  bergamot, 
eau  de  chypre,  eau  de  luce,  sanspareil,  and  citron 
juice."  The  taste  became  a  subject  of  legisla- 
tion. A  trifle  over  a  century  ago  an  Act  of 
Parliament  declared  that  "  all  women,  of  what- 
ever age,  rank,  profession,  or  degree,  that  shall 
impose,  seduce,  and  betray  into  matrimony  any 
of  His  Majesty's  subjects  by  the  use  of  paint, 
false  hair,  false  teeth,  iron  stays,  bolstered  hips, 
or  scents,  shall  incur  the  penalty  of  the  law 
in  force  against  witchcraft  and  like  misde- 
meanours, and  the  marriage,  upon  conviction, 
shall  stand  null  and  void." 

And  quite  right,  too.  Divorce  we  have  always 
regarded  as  the  mother-in-law  of  invention,  and 
we  can  imagine  no  better  ground  for  separation 
than  the  use  of  scents.  Beside  them  iron  stays 
and  bolstered  hips  are  charmful.  In  the  hair 
of  the  Beloved — not  Solomon's,  but  ours — there 


THE  TOILET  OF  VENUS  89 

is  a  fetching  freshness.  We  like  it  hest  when 
blown  by  the  wind  of  the  ocean.  The  smell 
on  her  of  brine  and  of  seaweed  is  more  captious 
to  us  than  was  musk  to  Muhammad.  When 
from  the  woodlands  she  returns,  her  frock 
redolent  of  the  breath  of  brooks,  of  the  odour 
of  acorns,  and  the  clean,  cool  smell  of  under- 
grass  grown  evergreen,  we  could  sit  down  and 
write — and  even  stand  up  and  dictate — a  sonnet. 
The  smoke  of  the  small  black  shavings  that 
come,  or  are  supposed  to  come,  from  the  Vuelta 
Abajo,  endears  her  to  us  also.  A  pretty  mouth 
seems  to  us  a  pretty  place  for  a  cigarette.  The 
use  of  it  by  no  means  betokens  the  fast  woman. 
Fast  women  try  so  hard  to  appear  respectable 
that  they  would  not  smell  of  tobacco  for  a 
farm.  It  is  a  mistaken  idea  to  the  contrary 
which  preserves  middle-class  femininity  from  its 
lure.  We  hope  this  paper  will  not  enlighten 
them.  We  are  not  here  to  educate  their  taste. 
To  pass  from  them  to  the  Beloved:  most  does 
she  imparadise  the  heart  when  on  the  saddle 
she  has  managed  to  accumulate  the  emanations 
of  the  fields  and  hedges  over  which  she  has 
shot.  Beside  her,  then,  a  nosegay  of  the 
essences  that  bloom  on  Bond  Street  seem  cheap 
and  meretricious.  On  such  occasions  she  sug- 


90  THE  POMPS   OF  SATAN 

gests  nothing  so  much  as  a  human  flower — a 
jasmine  in  flesh  and  blood. 

That  is  what  we  call  perfume  in  its  perfection. 
It  has  but  one  higher  stage.  Before  entering 
it  a  prelude  may  be  of  use. 

There  are  a  baker's  dozen  of  problems,  all  of 
which  look  very  simple,  and  which  it  is  con- 
veniently supposed  were  solved  long  ago.  So 
they  were.  But  the  solutions  have  not  a  leg 
to  stand  on.  For  instance  there  is  the  toilet 
of  Venus.  Ask  any  scientist  why  it  is  that 
with  every  evocation  of  the  goddess  come 
gusts  of  ambrosia,  and  if  you  pin  him  down 
he  will  give  it  up.  Scholars  are  readier.  They 
can  cite  Homer.  But  Homer  is  descriptive, 
not  explanatory.  Yet  for  every  effect  there 
is  a  cause.  This  is  not  an  exception.  Solomon 
intercepted  it.  So,  too,  did  Muhammad.  We 
who  are  less  agile  know  Elysium,  Heaven,  and 
Paradise  to  be  the  same  place  with  a  different 
name.  Ideas  of  it  vary  with  peoples  and 
prophets.  But  though  creeds  confuse,  though 
they  change,  too,  as  climates  do,  there  is  one 
conception  common  to  all.  It  is  that  humanity 
has  fallen  from  a  higher  estate  and  that  ideals 
are  but  reminiscences  of  what  we  once  beheld 
when  we  were  other  than  what  we  are. 


THE  TOILET  OF  VENUS  91 

Assuming  the  conception  to  be  correct,  we 
enter  with  it  into  a  more  intimate  understand- 
ing of  the  toilet  of  Venus  than  science  and 
scholarship  have  been  able  to  provide.  For 
with  it,  hand  in  hand,  comes  a  clue  to  the 
problem  of  perfumes.  However  much  the 
latter  may  be  out  of  fashion  now,  they  have 
their  reason  and  their  rhyme.  Everything  has. 
The  purpose  of  centipedes  and  critics  is  not 
entirely  clear.  The  purpose  of  jellyfish  and 
bores  is  not  obvious  either.  But  they  were 
not  put  here  without  an  object.  As  with  them, 
so  with  the  rose.  Its  patent  of  nobility  is  to 
be  useless.  It  charms,  indeed,  but  it  seems  to 
have  no  other  scheme  of  existence.  In  the  lap 
of  nature  it  lolls,  lovely  and  enigmatic.  But 
Solomon,  who  was  a  seer,  and  Muhammad,  who 
was  a  medium,  divined  its  meaning.  Their 
joint  love  of  perfume  was  due  to  an  intuition 
that  in  the  ethereal  hereafter  it  is  on  the 
odours  of  flowers  that  spirits  subsist. 

It  is  for  this  reason  that  the  young  altars 
of  the  old  gods  were  splendid  with  aromatics. 
It  is  for  this  reason  that  everything  sacred  was 
scented.  It  is  for  this  reason,  because,  like 
ideals,  perfumes  are  reminiscences  of  the  divine. 
In  an  ancient  geography  it  is  written  that 


92  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

beyond  Astomia  dwell  beings  who  live  on  the 
scent  of  the  rose.  Astomia  should  not  be  con- 
founded with  the  Astoria.  Beyond  it  means 
beyond  the  tomb.  Even  so,  the  customs  of 
the  next  world  are  not  suited  to  the  Waldorf. 
When  society  was  more  primitive,  and  conse- 
quently nearer  its  anterior  state,  perfumes, 
however  pungent,  were  permissible,  and,  for 
that  matter,  praiseworthy,  too.  To-day  the 
Beloved  no  longer  suggests  a  cluster  of  cam- 
phire.  From  Aphrodite,  as  she  deigns  to  appear 
to  us,  every  trace  of  ambrosia  has  gone.  .  She 
smells  of  fresh  cambric  and  fresh  air.  She  is 
pretty  as  a  peach  and,  parenthetically,  just 
about  as  witty,  but  she  doesn't  go  to  the 
apothecary  for  unguents  now.  She  perfumes, 
herself  with  health,  occasionally  with  virtue. 
She  leaves  essences  to  maids,  extracts  to  shop- 
ladies,  and,  unless  she  had  a  dictionary  handy, 
she  could  not  spell  patchouli  to  save  her  life. 

So  do  customs  change,  fashions,  too,  and  with 
them  the  Toilet  of  Venus. 


VIII 
THE   QUEST   OF   PARADISE 

THERE  are  people  who  charm  at  sight.  There 
are  others  who  produce  sites  that  charm.  There 
are  even  some  who  do  both.  Dr  Lucas  is  one 
of  them.  We  never  heard  of  him  before,  and 
already  we  have  learned  to  love  him.  Dr  Lucas 
is  an  associate  of  the  Geological  Survey.  As 
such  he  has  announced  a  grand  discovery.  He 
has  succeeded  in  locating  the  Garden  of  Eden. 
For  reasons  sufficient  to  him,  and  therefore 
good  enough  for  anybody,  he  designates  Luzon 
as  the  spot.  Here,  or  rather  there,  is  the  First 
Family's  Midway  Plaisance.  Here,  too,  is  not 
merely  a  grand  discovery  but  a  sort  of  national 
thanksgiving.  In  acquiring  the  Philippines  we 
have  annexed  Paradise.  What  have  the  anti- 
imperialists  to  say  to  that? 

The  discovery  is  of  a  nature  to  interest  them 
precisely  as  it   must    interest    everybody ;    yet 

particularly,  perhaps,  Mr  Thomas  Cook  and  Mr 
93 


94  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

Baedeker.  Should  the  site  be  accepted  as  exact, 
we  assume  without  effort  that  one  of  these 
gentlemen  will  prepare  round-trip  tickets,  and 
the  other  the  obvious  guide-book.  The  Story 
of  the  Fall,  which  Mr  Baedeker  is  sure  to  inter- 
calate among  the  usual  Hints  to  Travellers, 
will,  for  many,  have  the  force  and  flavour  of  a 
new  scandal.  The  doctrine  of  Original  Sin, 
expounded  in  the  appendix,  all  conscientious 
Sunday  editors  will  seize  upon  as  a  feature.  It 
will  be  new  to  them  also. 

Yet  the  delights  of  the  guide-book,  however 
manifold,  will  pale  beside  the  pleasures  in  store 
for  the  tourist.  Fancy  the  sensations  which  the 
most  satiated  of  globe  trotters  will  experience 
on  beholding  a  tree  which  is  certified  to  be  that 
of  Good  and  Evil!  Fancy,  too,  the  travellers' 
tales  of  those  who  have  vacated  the  Gates ! 
Possibilities  such  as  these  are  too  good  to  be 
true.  According  to  Moses,  or,  more  exactly, 
according  to  scholastic  interpretations  of  his 
statements  on  the  subject,  Paradise  was  situ- 
ated in  a  garden  of  gold,  of  bdellium,  and  of 
onyx.  Arminius  put  it  in  a  clear  conscience. 
Villon  in  the  eyes  of  the  well-beloved.  Dr  Lucas 
has  put  it  on  the  map.  There  is  the  ideal,  or 
rather,  there  is  progress. 


THE  QUEST  OF  PARADISE  95 

Others,  though,  have  been  as  progressive. 
Consider,  for  instance,  the  Canaries.  Kennst 
du  das  Land  wo  die  Citronen  blumen?  There 
it  is.  According  to  ancient,  yet  not  standard 
authorities,  there,  too,  was  Paradise.  The 
Canaries  are  the  Fortunate  Isles,  lambulus  says, 
or  is  said  to  have  said,  for  really  we  have  not 
read  him,  and  probably  could  not  if  we  tried, 
and  would  not  bother  to,  anyway  —  however, 
lambulus  is  reported  to  have  stated  that  these 
islands  were  inhabited  by  a  set  of  people  who 
had  elastic  bones,  bifurcated  tongues,  whose 
lives  were  a  succession  of  sweetnesses,  and  who, 
when  overtaken  by  age,  lay  on  a  perfumed  grass 
that  produced  a  voluptuous  death.  That  must 
have  been  a  long  time  ago.  Perhaps,  too,  the 
story  is  not  true.  In  any  event,  nothing  of  the 
kind  is  encounterable  there  now.  Yet  we  might 
just  as  well  have  had  these  islands  as  the 
Philippines.  Everything  being  possible,  it  may 
be  that  some  day  we  shall.  In  which  case  those 
whom  Dr  Lucas'  discovery  does  not  satisfy  may 
betake  themselves  to  the  Canaries  instead. 

Then,  also,  there  is  Venezuela.  From  the 
Gulf  of  Paria  Columbus  wrote  loyally  to  Fer- 
dinand and  Isabella  that  just  beyond  was 
Paradise.  He  wrote  not  merely  loyally,  but 


96  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

logically.  In  the  neighbourhood  were  the  en- 
chantments of  El  Dorado.  A  trifle  to  the  north 
were  Bimini's  Waters  of  Youth,  and,  more  re- 
motely, stretched  Tlapallan,  the  Land  of  Colours. 

That  land  of  colours  is  Yucatan  to-day.  The 
enchantments  of  El  Dorado  have  dissolved  in 
the  sultriness  of  Trinidad,  and  Bimini's  Waters 
of  Youth  Ponce  de  Leon  sought  and  failed  to 
find  in  Florida.  The  latter  we  have,  and  many 
of  us  a  few  Palm  Beach  hotel  bills  by  way  of 
reminder.  Over  the  others  ultimately  our  flag 
will  flaunt.  In  the  quest  of  Paradise,  therefore, 
we  are  by  no  means  limited  to  Luzon.  Yet 
though  there  is  a  trust  in  the  matter  there  is 
no  monopoly.  Others  have  been  quite  free  to 
pick  and  choose. 

Some  old  chaps  selected  Avalon,  where  rapture 
was  such  that  a  year  was  a  minute.  We  have 
not  an  idea  where  it  can  be,  otherwise  the 
location  would  not  be  withheld  from  our  readers. 
But  it  is  somewhere.  So,  also,  is  Ceylon,  where 
a  good  bishop  said  every  prospect  pleases  and 
only  man  is  vile.  So,  too,  is  the  Kingdom  of 
Prester  John,  just  beyond  which  other  old  chaps 
declared  Paradise  to  be.  Nor  is  this  all.  Theo- 
logians have  placed  Eden  in  Mesopotamia, 
travellers  in  Central  Africa,  ethnologists  in 


THE  QUEST  OF  PARADISE  97 

Atlantis,  mythologists  in  Limuria,  philosophers 
in  Utopia,  and  litterateurs  at  the  Pole — which, 
to  be  as  cosmopolitan  as  the  rest  of  them,  con- 
stitutes, we  think,  a  real  embarrassment  of 
choice. 

Even  so,  it  did  not  embarrass  Sven  Hedin. 
Last  year  —  or  was  it  the  year  before?  —  he 
dismissed  them  all,  and,  quite  as  definitely 
as  Dr  Lucas  put  his  finger  on  Luzon,  this 
gentleman  indicated  Janaidar. 

Janaidar  is  a  city  in  the  uplands  of  Asia,  to 
which  the  Kirghiz  look  and  pray  as  they  pass. 
Perched  on  a  peak  of  the  Pamirs,  provided  with 
flowers  that  never  wither,  with  delights  that 
never  end,  with  songs  that  never  cease,  it  surges 
above  the  barren  plains  a  mirage  of  terrestrial 
bliss.  Dr  Hedin  tried  to  ascend  the  height  on 
which  it  is  set.  Being  mortal,  he  failed.  It  is 
as  well,  perhaps.  He  has  an  illusion  left.  So 
have  we.  Always  and  everywhere  there  is  an 
abode  of  bliss.  But  on  condition  that  it  is 
treated  as  the  Kirghiz  treat  Janaidar,  that  it 
is  looked  up  to,  prayed  to,  and  then  passed  by. 

Through  an  inability  to  imitate  the  Kirghiz, 

or,  perhaps,  because  they  never  heard  of  them, 

others  have  attempted  artificial  ascents.    Among 

these  is  Baudelaire.    With  nothing  but  haschisch 

G 


98  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

for  ladder  the  ascent  was  effected ;  he  was  there, 
living  in  uninterrupted  delights,  listening  to 
harmonies  no  mortal  ever  heard  before,  con- 
templating landscapes  of  amber  and  emerald, 
perspectives  the  colour  of  dream,  and  with 
them,  perhaps,  the  lost  arcana,  the  secrets  of 
the  enigmae  of  the  universe,  the  science  that 
Plutonian  cataclysms  engulfed,  the  recitals  of 
the  genesis  and  metamorphosis  of  the  super- 
nal, the  chronicles  of  the  forgotten  relations 
of  nature  and  man. 

Another  was  De  Quincey.  In  the  hallucina- 
tions of  the  glass  of  "laudanum  negus,  warm, 
without  sugar,"  which  he  used  for  ascent,  there 
were  infinite  cavalcades,  the  undulations  of 
tumults,  the  catastrophes  of  mighty  dramas, 
choruses  of  passion,  trepidations  of  innumerable 
fugitives,  tempests  of  features,  forms,  and  fare- 
wells, shuttled  by  sudden  lambiencies,  by  the 
consonance  of  citterns  and  clavichords,  by  ^Eolian 
intonations,  by  revelations  of  power  and  beauty, 
by  pomps  and  glories,  until  a  vault,  opening  in 
the  zenith  of  the  far  blue  sky,  showed  a  shaft 
of  light  that  ran  up  for  ever  through  millennia, 
through  aeons;  and  up  that  shaft  his  spirit 
mounted,  mounted,  mounted  ever  farther  yet, 
until  peace  slept  upon  him  as  dawn  upon  the  sea. 


THE  QUEST  OF  PARADISE  99 

In  addition  to  haschish  and  opium  other 
ladders  have  been  used.  Among  them  mescal 
is  citable — not  the  agave  preparation,  but  a 
plant  which  yields  a  substance  brown  and 
bitter,  and  of  which  the  effects  resemble  Indian 
hemp. 

Mescal  is  much  in  vogue  among  the  Tara- 
humari,  a  tribe  of  Mexican  Indians,  to  whom 
the  plant  is  a  god,  approachable  only  after  fas- 
tidious rites,  the  body  perfumed  with  cophal, 
the  heart  entirely  devout.  And  no  wonder. 
For,  properly  placated,  the  god  conducts  the 
worshipper  to  a  series  of  visions  in  which 
he  is  beckoned  into  Paradise  and  then  shown 
out  —  provided  he  has  absorbed  the  proper 
dose. 

That  dose  we  have  personally  lacked  the 
opportunity  to  absorb,  but  if  we  may  believe 
everything  we  hear — and  we  are  always  most 
anxious  to — Mr  Havelock  Ellis  has.  With  it  he 
encountered  a  vast  field  of  golden  jewels,  per- 
fumes also,  on  which  flowerf ul  shapes  convoluted 
into  gorgeous  butterflies,  gyrated  in  loops  of 
flame,  and  performed  skirt  dances  before  him, 
providing  him  with  living  pictures,  or,  rather, 
what  he,  with  perhaps  a  higher  conception  of 
the  possibilities  of  language,  calls  "living 


100  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

arabesques."  In  the  background  were,  he  noted, 
architectural  sweetmeats  in  the  Maori  style — 
whatever  style  that  may  be — enhanced  "with 
the  moucharabieh  work  of  Cairo." 

This  sort  of  thing  continued  for  hours,  until, 
indeed,  Mr  Ellis  went  to  bed,  when  he  became, 
as  he  expresses  it,  greatly  impressed  by  the 
"  red,  scaly,  bronzed,  and  pigmented  appearance 
of  his  limbs,"  particularly — and  strange  to  say 
— whenever  he  was  not  gazing  directly  at 
them. 

Dissatisfied  with  the  result,  he  experimented 
on  a  friend,  to  whom  he  amicably  distributed 
an  overdose,  and  who  with  some  pathos  relates 
that  thereupon  he  had  a  series  of  paroxysms 
which  made  him  feel  as  if  he  were  about  to  give 
up  the  ghost.  He  enjoyed  a  sense  of  speedy 
dissolution,  accompanied,  and  presumably  accent- 
uated, by  an  entire  inability  to  resist,  yet  quickly 
followed  by  an  acuter  apprehension  that  one  of 
his  eyes  had  turned  into  a  pool  of  dirty  water 
in  which  millions  and  millions  of  minute  tadpoles 
were  afloat.  Then  he,  too,  was  gratified  with  a 
skirt  dance  of  arabesques  that  arose,  descended, 
palpitated,  and  slid,  for  which,  however,  he  was 
presently  punished  by  a  procession  of  sudden 
frights.  His  left  leg  became  solid,  his  body 


THE  QUEST  OF  PARADISE  101 

immaterial,  his  arms  impalpable,  the  back  of  his 
head  emitted  flames,  to  his  mouth  came  the  burn 
of  fire,  to  his  ears  the  buzz  of  bees,  interrupted 
by  the  impression  of  skin  disappearing  from  the 
brow,  of  dead  flesh,  of  hot  chills,  and,  finally,  of 
a  grinning  skull. 

It  is  into  such  byways  that  the  quest  of 
Paradise  may  lead  one.  Yet  there  are  others, 
notably  those  disclosed  by  drink.  Byron  used 
that  guide,  so  did  Poe,  so  did  de  Musset.  Under 
the  influence  of  the  Yellow  Fay,  whose  name  is 
Eau  de  Vie  and  should  be  Au  Dela,  they  left  the 
world,  crossed  the  frontiers  of  the  possible,  and 
in  a  swift  pursuit  of  larger  flowers,  rarer  per- 
fumes, pleasures  unen joyed,  passed  from  new 
horizons  into  visions  brutally  beautiful,  wholly 
solid,  dreamless  and  real,  where,  fairer  than  the 
desire  of  a  fallen  god,  the  Muse  stood,  her  arms 
outstretched. 

It  is  a  wonderful  journey,  but  the  landscapes 
it  unveils  are  not  suited  to  common  clay.  There 
are  colours  there  to  which  the  rest  of  us  are  blind, 
melodies  to  which  we  are  deaf,  the  white  assump- 
tion of  realised  ideals.  Such  things  are  not  for 
ordinary  man.  The  summit  scaled,  or  even 
attempted,  instead  of  resplendent  perspectives, 
instead  of  the  pulsations  of  higher  hopes,  the 


102  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

savours  of  life  unto  life,  the  odours  and  foretastes 
of  immaculate  joy,  there  is  stupor  when  there  is 
not  horror,  delirium  when  there  is  not  death, 
Purgatory  instead  of  Paradise.  It  is  a  great 
place,  though,  for  men  who  want  to  drown 
their  sorrows,  and  always  will  be  until  they 
learn  that  sorrows  know  how  to  swim. 

In  an  effort  to  forget,  or,  rather,  not  to  re- 
member, that  the  end  of  life  is  darkness  and  the 
font  of  it  pain,  persons  more  fastidious  have 
turned  to  love.  But  that  also  has  its  defects. 
In  the  smart  set  it  is  a  game,  and  a  very  pretty 
one  too,  only  when  you  are  old  enough  to  play 
it  properly  you  are  too  old  to  play  it  at  all.  In 
which  respect  it  is  inferior  to  bridge  whist. 
Platonism  is  much  better.  The  trouble,  though, 
with  that  arrangement  is  that  either  the  party 
of  the  first  part  loses  her  head  or  the  party  of 
the  second  part  loses  his  temper.  Neither  result 
is  conducive  to  happiness,  and  happiness  is  but 
a  synonym  for  Paradise. 

Happiness  is  what  we  think  it  is,  but  only 
when  what  we  think  it  is  what  we  have  not  got. 
Love  is  refreshing  and  wealth  delightful.  But 
they  do  not  bring  happiness.  Even  golf  may 
fail.  Matrimony  too,  for  that  matter.  The 
happiness  of  matrimony  is  not,  however,  a 


THE  QUEST  OF  PARADISE  103 

subject  that  may  be  lightly  talked  away.  There 
are  and  have  been,  and  presumably  always  will 
be,  a  number  of  marriages  that  are  delicious. 
Yet  none  is  perfect.  But,  then,  does  perfection 
exist  ? 

Personally,  we  have  heard  matrimony  defined 
as  one  woman  more  and  one  man  less.  The 
definition  seemed  to  us  inadequate.  Then,  too, 
it  is  a  long  time  since  the  noose  matri- 
monial ceased  to  be  news.  Yet  that  noose 
we  have  heard  praised  for  the  opportunities 
which  it  affords  for  the  development  of  the 
emotions  known  as  unselfish.  Certainly  it 
is  highly  chastening.  But  chastened  people 
have  no  individuality.  The  big  bugs  of  his- 
tory were  thorough-paced  egotists.  Caesar  at 
the  Rubicon,  Napoleon  at  Marengo,  Carnegie 
at  the  Steel  deal,  did  not  care  a  rap  for  a 
soul  save  themselves.  Do  we  not  honour  them 
for  it?  It  is  of  such  stuff  that  greatness 
comes.  But,  like  matrimony,  like  golf,  and 
bridge  whist,  greatness  is  not  happiness. 
When  Alexander  was  tramping  India  in 
search  of  the  sight  that  Dr  Lucas  has  found 
in  Luzon,  an  ordinary  person  presumed  to  tell 
him  that  he  was  on  the  wrong  road.  "The 
right  way,"  said  the  person,  "  is  humility."  We 


104  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

have  tried  the  path  and  discovered,  just  as 
Columbus  discovered  in  the  Gulf  of  Paria,  that 
Paradise  lay  beyond. 

"We  are  all  born  in  Arcadia,"  said  Schiller, 
who  omitted  to  add  that  we  emigrated  at 
once.  But  the  idea  is  sound.  We  are  born  with 
a  belief  in  Paradise.  The  quest  of  it  fills  our 
dreams.  The  delays  in  getting  there  furnish 
our  nightmares.  Yet  of  all  those  who  have 
sought  it,  nobody  has  ever  got  there  after 
the  age  of  forty,  or,  we  may  hasten  to  add, 
before. 

Beautiful  as  an  uncommitted  sin,  it  stretches 
far  away,  too  far,  indeed,  for  laggard  steps  like 
ours.  It  is  not  in  Luzon,  as  Dr  Lucas  has  an- 
nounced. It  is  not  in  the  Fortunate  Isles,  as 
the  ancients  thought.  The  artificial  substitute 
does  not  pay,  the  Biblical  Plaisance  has  ceased 
to  be.  In  the  twentieth  century  there  is  no 
such  place. 

These  premises  admitted,  there  should  be 
somethin  to  take  its  place,  and  there  is.  An 
epicure  provided  it.  He  called  it  Contentment. 
Given  that,  and  the  possessor  can  dispense  with 
Paradise  every  day  in  the  year.  The  factors  are 
twofold.  The  first  is  health;  the  second  in- 
difference. The  conjunction  of  these  little  things 


THE  QUEST  OF  PARADISE  105 

does  not  produce  Elysium,  but  it  steers  one  clear 
of  Hades.  Anyone  who  expects  more  than  that 
is  too  good  for  the  good  things,  and  particularly 
for  the  bad  things— which  are  often  better — with 
which  this  world  is  bestrewn. 


IX 
TRUFFLES  AND  TOKAY 

LITERATURE  used  to  be  a  battlefield.  To-day  it 
is  a  restaurant.  A  virtuous  writer  no  longer 
pinks  a  rival ;  he  caters  to  the  public.  The  food 
is  cheap,  easy  of  digestion  and  as  easily  pre- 
pared. The  equipment  necessary  for  its  produc- 
tion is  readily  acquired,  and  profitable  when 
obtained.  All  the  cook  needs  is  an  absence  of 
imagination  and  a  fountain  pen.  Given  these 
condiments,  success  is  sure. 

That  is  natural.  One  touch  of  stupidity  makes 
the  world  kin.  Considered  as  a  nation,  we  are, 
of  course,  perfectly  splendid.  The  glory  that 
was  Greece,  and  the  grandeur  that  was  Rome, 
are  not  in  it  with  us.  We  have  only  to  look  at 
the  papers  to  be  convinced  of  that.  The  paeans 
of  our  progress  are  as  deafening  as  leaded  type 
can  make  them.  The  celerity  with  which  we 
breed  plutocrats  is  exceeded  only  by  the  servility 

with  which  we  cultivate  them.     In  the  export  of 

106 


TRUFFLES  AND  TOKAY  107 

heiresses  the  manufactories  of  Europe  cannot 
touch  us.  Before  our  professional  beauties  the 
Peris  of  Paradise  slink  abashed.  We  produce 
everything,  including  panics,  and  raise  all  things 
except  masterpieces. 

That,  also,  is  natural.  We  are,  perhaps,  master- 
ful, certainly  mercenary,  but  not  metrical.  The 
land  of  the  free  is  the  home  of  progress,  yet 
not  of  poets.  In  years  when  the  world  went 
slower  poets  were  regarded  as  butlers  of  the 
gods.  Their  ambrosia  was  received  with  genu- 
flections. In  their  nectar  was  the  divine  afflatus. 
The  custom  has  been  abrogated.  Barring  Mam- 
mon, the  gods  have  gone.  There  is  not  a  trace 
of  the  afflatus  left.  Our  climate  does  not  agree 
with  it.  Our  climate  does  not  agree  with  poets 
either.  It  induces  in  them  radiating  chloro- 
f  or  mania.  Instead  of  genuflections  they  are 
greeted  with  yawns.  Their  nectar  obtains 
every  kind  of  reception  except  consumption. 
Their  titles  have  been  examined.  It  has  been 
found  that  in  descending  the  years  they  have 
degenerated  from  butlers  into  apothecaries. 
Their  ambrosia  is  a  drug  on  the  market.  In  a 
wide-awake,  democratic  country  like  this  that 
sort  of  thing  doesn't  do.  The  vocation,  as  a 
consequence,  creates  not  yawns  and  ridicule 


108  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

merely,  but  indignation.  "Who  is  that  chap?" 
a  man  in  some  misery  asked  us  recently.  "  He 
is  a  young  poet,"  we  answered.  "  I  hate  young 
poets,"  was  his  reply.  And  yet,  as  Gautier,  with 
a  charming  affectation  of  naivete,  remarked,  an 
inability  to  write  in  verse  can  scarcely  be  con- 
sidered as  constituting  a  special  talent. 

Perhaps,  however,  it  may.  An  inability  to 
write  anything  but  cheques  is  the  smart  thing 
here.  A  pilgrim  from  Paris  noted  that  we  have 
developed  a  hundred  religions  and  but  a  single 
sauce.  That  sauce,  surmounting  our  kitchens, 
has  assimilated  our  flummeries,  our  festivities, 
our  frescoes,  and  fiction.  Here  and  there  the 
sameness  of  it  is  relieved  by  a  touch  of  origin- 
ality. But  the  touch  is  sporadic.  The  blue  ribbon 
is  scarce.  Hence  the  rarity  of  masterpieces. 

The  cuisine  of  the  latter  differs  from  current 
cookery.  In  Milan  the  education  of  a  ballet  girl 
begins  at  the  age  of  six.  Until  she  effects  her 
debut  she  works  ten  hours  a  day.  The  young  of 
both  sexes  who  aspire  to  be  cordons  bleu  should 
begin  a  little  earlier  and  work  harder  yet.  By 
way  of  batterie  de  cuisine  there  is  the  dictionary. 
Spelling  they  may  leave  to  their  problematic 
proof-reader ;  grammar  too.  No  grammarian 
ever  wrote  a  thing  that  was  fit  to  read.  They 


TRUFFLES  AND  TOKAY  109 

need  not  bother  with  style  either ;  geniuses  often 
write  badly,  and  so  much  the  better  for  them. 
Besides,  style  is  easy  enough  to  manipulate 
when  you  know  how,  and  seems  easier  still 
when  you  don't.  But  to  the  chef  en  herbe  words 
must  have  no  secrets.  He  must  know  how  to 
toss  them  as  a  juggler  throws  knives.  He  must 
be  able  to  plant  them  in  such  fashion  that  they 
will  explode  like  bombs  before  the  reader's  eyes. 
If  necessary,  they  must  enable  him  to  have  an 
attack  of  hysterics  on  paper. 

After  the  conquest  of  the  dictionary,  the 
scullion  who  has  anything  to  fricassee  will 
know  how  to  prepare  it.  Yet  then  should  an 
idea,  however  complex,  a  vision,  however  apo- 
calyptic, surprise  him  without  words  to  convey 
it,  he  may  just  as  well  take  off  his  apron.  He 
lacks,  not  necessarily  the  elements  of  success — 
on  the  contrary  —  but  the  gastronomies  that 
distinguish  the  first-class  cook.  He  may  stew 
succotash  by  the  pail,  yet  never  truffles  and 
tokay.  On  the  other  hand,  should  chance 
enable  him  to  catch  Inspiration  in  the  dark, 
should  fortune  assist  him  in  throwing  her 
down,  and  talent  aid  him  in  filching  a  master- 
piece from  her  glittering  corsage,  he  may  be 
intimately  convinced  that  it  was  the  wrong 


110  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

party  he  met  should  that  masterpiece  prove  pop- 
ular. A  book  that  pleases  no  one  may  be  poor. 
The  book  that  pleases  everyone  is  detestable. 

To  young  ladies  of  cognate  aspirations  the 
same  course  of  sprouts  is  requisite.  But  with 
no  matrimony  in  it.  An  authoress  should  not 
wed  unless  she  can  marry  a  publisher.  A  pub- 
lisher is  a  handy  person  to  have  about  the  house. 
Failing  the  chance  at  one,  in  no  circumstances 
should  she  even  for  a  moment  consider  the 
possibility  of  taking  any  form  of  husband  not 
equally  serviceable  and  quite  as  lack-lustre. 
Look  at  Marie  Corelli.  The  heroes  of  whom 
she  has  delivered  herself  would  fill  a  ten-acre  lot. 
And  yet  for  the  hand  of  that  delicious,  bare- 
back, sawdusted  circus-rider  of  the  fountain 
pen,  princes  have  wooed  unavailingly.  And  look 
at  Ouida.  The  types  of  manhood  that  she  has 
produced  are  quasi-divine;  and  yet,  though 
wooed  too,  neither  has  she  been  won.  Then 
there  is,  or  rather  there  was,  George  Sand. 
Through  an  early  page  of  her  career  there 
wandered  the  dissolute  Greuze  of  literature, 
whose  name  is  Alfred  de  Musset.  Through  a 
later  chapter  there  passed  the  Apollo  of  im- 
peccable accords,  whose  name  is  Chopin.  As 
neither  happened  to  be  in  the  publishing  busi- 


TRUFFLES  AND  TOKAY  111 

ness  she  used  them  both  for  copy,  and  married 
a  philistine. 

These  statistics  are  not  voluminous,  but  they 
have  the  superior  merit  of  luminousness.  They 
show  that  princesses  of  the  pen  who  do  not  re- 
main single  prefer  commonplace  consorts.  And 
that,  after  many  vigils  and  much  communion, 
we  regard  as  quite  right.  It  is  an  axiom  in  law 
that  fighting  cocks  should  be  kept  apart.  It  is 
an  axiom  in  letters  that  epigrams  from  the  other 
end  of  the  table  are  provoking.  It  is  an  axiom 
in  lyrics  that,  however  delightful  the  exchange  of 
repartee  and  kisses  may  be,  neither  is  conducive 
to  the  production  of  fiction,  trite  or  thrilling. 

Young  gentlewomen  have,  then,  a  choice 
between  living  novels  and  writing  them.  The 
former  condition  is  to  be  preferred.  The  revels 
of  romance  may  be  roseate,  or  the  reverse,  but 
matrimony  is  no  child's  play.  Besides,  young 
gentlewomen  should,  perhaps,  content  them- 
selves with  continuing  to  be.  The  moment 
they  cease  to  shirk  every  duty  in  that  sphere 
of  life  to  which  it  pleased  God  to  call  them, 
their  charm  becomes  so  pernicious  that  they 
incite  to  bigamy — a  crime  of  which  the  penalties 
have  been  summarised  as  two  mothers-in-law, 
or  at-law,  in  the  discretion  of  the  judge.  But 


112  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

as  the  subject  is  momentous,  let  us  consult  the 
authorities.  Here,  for  instance,  is  Nietzsche. 
According  to  him,  man  should  be  reared  for 
the  vocation  of  warrior  and  woman  for  the 
warrior's  recreation.  Now,  if  she  work,  how 
can  she  be  recreative  ?  And  here  is  Dr  Watts : 
"Satan,"  he  says,  "finds  some  mischief  still  for 
idle  hands  to  do."  The  conversation  of  a  lady 
who  lacks  the  leisure  to  be  mischievous  is  bound 
to  be  very  dull.  Then,  also,  wives  that  write 
have  not  time  to  argue  with  their  husbands, 
and  when  a  woman  ceases  to  quarrel  she 
ceases  to  love.  In  view  of  all  which,  it  seems 
to  follow  that  girls  cannot  combine  matrimony 
and  masterpieces  —  at  the  same  time  at  least 
— and  young  gentlemen  cannot  either.  Eagles, 
poets,  and  kings  must — and  will — circle  alone. 
By  the  same  token,  all  dealers  in  the  ideal  are 
better  off  by  themselves,  or,  at  a  pinch,  less 
worse  off  with  transient  flirtations  than  per- 
manent families. 

There  are  reasons  for  all  things.  We  have 
several  for  this,  and  may  find  another.  Matri- 
mony presupposes  happiness.  It  usually  takes 
it  out  at  that.  But  there  is  the  general  theory. 
Assuming  it  to  be  valid,  happiness  dulls  the 
brain.  As  such,  it  is  to  be  avoided.  It  is  only 


TRUFFLES  AND  TOKAY  113 

when  authors  are  absolutely  miserable  that  the 
wretches  can  do  themselves  justice.  And  even 
were  matrimony,  through  its  chastening  effects, 
to  induce  that  result,  it  is  open  to  a  yet  graver 
objection. 

To  stir  the  wits,  to  make  ink  flow  in  floods 
and  the  pen  acrobatic,  there  is  nothing  like 
solitude.  No  one  not  in  the  business  can  under- 
stand how  populous  it  is.  No  one  not  in  the 
trade  can  understand  how  loquacious  its  phan- 
toms become.  They  have  their  defects.  They 
poison  you  for  the  realities  of  life.  None  the 
less,  to  be  worth  his  syndicate  an  author  must 
evoke  them.  He  must  play  with  hallucinations 
as  Mithridates  did  with  drugs.  But  he  must 
play  alone. 

Literature — when  not  a  restaurant — isadivinity, 
and  a  jealous  one.  She  suffers  no  other  worship. 
She  forces  you  to  shut  every  extraneous  desire, 
ambition,  and  inclination  into  cages  where,  now 
and  then,  for  the  distraction  of  the  thing,  you 
may  go  and  see  how  they  are.  But  you  must 
go  alone.  Take  a  companion  in  the  shape  of 
a  wife  or,  worse  yet,  a  husband,  and  there  is 
an  end  to  the  high  hallucinatory  fever  that  she 
provides.  There  also  is  a  farewell  to  that 
untrammelled  freedom  which  is  the  pundit's 
H 


114  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

natural  heath.  The  lives  of  great  sages  all 
remind  us  that  in  their  sagacity  they  were 
too  sagacious  to  marry.  The  lives  of  great 
poets  all  remind  us  that,  uniformly  married, 
they  uniformly  wished  they  were  not. 

These  are  the  reasons  that  we  promised.  Here 
is  the  other  that  we  didn't.  Should  matrimony 
occur,  the  party  of  the  second  part,  being  a 
mere  mortal,  will,  like  other  mere  mortals,  love 
society,  will  affect  to  say,  as  others  have,  that 
it  is  a  bore  to  be  in  it,  and  feel,  as  others  do 
and  will,  that  it  is  a  tragedy  not  to. 

Yet  in  society  how  many  dealers  in  the  ideal 
are  there  ?  There  is  the  Duchess  of  Sutherland. 
There  is  the  Queen  of  Roumania.  But  these 
ladies  are  superior  women,  and  superior  women, 
being  always  long-winded,  are  able  to  do  double 
duty.  Apart  from  them,  magnificent  examples 
are  few.  They  exist,  however,  yet  not  on  the 
list  of  smart  people.  The  latter  are  charming, 
but  they  do  not  read ;  and,  as  for  writing,  good 
Lord !  possessing,  as  they  do,  the  ability  to  write 
cheques,  they  fancy  that  therein  is  all  the  law 
and  most  of  the  profits.  What  is  worse,  they 
are  right.  In  the  way  of  literature  anything 
further  would  be  a  surfeit. 

Society  is  hard  labour.     So  also  is  fiction.     It 


TRUFFLES  AND  TOKAY  115 

is,  an  old  troubadour  remarked,  a  toil  at  which 
galley-slaves  would  balk.  One  form  of  hard 
labour  is  supersufficient.  An  added  variety 
would  do  up  a  football  team.  Hence  it  is  that 
society  is  not  literary,  and  the  literary  are  not 
social.  Of  all  pursuits  this  is  the  most  difficult. 
The  sculptor  has  his  chisel,  the  musician  his 
piano,  the  painter  his  brush.  The  novelist  has 
but  his  brain.  The  sculptor,  the  musician,  the 
painter  have  instruments  to  second  them.  The 
novelist  is  the  instrument  and  the  instru- 
mentalist. He  chisels  the  impalpable,  attunes 
the  inaudible,  and  paints  the  unseen.  Or  at 
least  he  did  before  he  was  submerged  in  the 
swirl  of  succotash  that  gushes  from  the  scul- 
leries of  the  department  stores. 

What  will  become  of  that  deliciousness,  and 
of  anterior  messes  quite  as  delightful,  the  giant 
library  now  in  process  of  construction  on  Fifth 
Avenue  one  of  these  days  will  tell.  If  we  may 
believe  all  we  hear — and  that  is  not  always  a 
pleasure — this  library  is  to  be  a  very  fine  place. 
In  some  splendour  and  entire  spaciousness  Error 
will  sleep  there  side  by  side  with  Truth.  How 
much  of  the  one  and  how  little  of  the  other  its 
galleries  will  contain,  speculative  spiders  may 
•decide.  But  one  thing  is  certain.  The  best  books 


116  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

will  not  be  there.  Precisely  as  the  prettiest 
women  are  always  those  whom  we  have  yet  to 
meet,  so  are  literature's  most  fascinating  pro- 
ductions still  unwritten. 

If,  as  is  generally  suspected,  the  value  of  a 
work  consists  more  in  what  it  suggests  than 
in  what  it  says,  the  most  uplifting  books  will 
not  be  in  that  library  either.  There  is,  for  in- 
stance, the  Book  of  Nature,  a  treatise  that  all 
philosophers  begin  and  none  of  them  finish. 
There  is  also  the  Book  of  Destiny,  which  all 
thinkers  consult  and  none  can  construe.  Then 
there  is  the  Book  of  Love,  whose  scroll  age 
cannot  scan  and  youth  cannot  fathom.  Finally, 
there  is  the  Book  of  Life,  of  which  the  pages 
vanish  as  you  turn  them. 

These  books  will  not  be  found  on  Fifth 
Avenue.  In  their  stead  there  will  be  an  acre  of 
information  on  everything  that  it  is  easiest  to 
forget,  another  acre  of  everything  that  it  is 
useless  to  remember,  ton  after  ton  of  rubbish 
that  none  but  the  authors  and  their  enemies 
could  be  hired  to  look  at,  ton  after  ton  of 
solemn  lies  that  have  survived  only  because 
Death  has  ignored  them,  ton  after  ton  of  de- 
funct theories,  of  demised  ideas,  of  deceased 
lore,  and  derelict  science — with  here  and  there 


TRUFFLES  AND  TOKAY  117 

a  few  baskets  of  truffles,  a  few  bottles  of  tokay, 
a  few  flowers  of  real  literature,  of  which  the  wit 
and  wisdom  can  never  die. 

For  the  rest  of  the  cemetery  our  hopes  are 
slim.  We  foresee  dimly,  yet  surely,  an  hour 
when  Posterity  will  dump  the  lot  in  a  dust-bin 
and  put  a  Hie  jacet  on  it  all — put  it,  we  say,  yet 
providing,  of  course,  that  she  takes  the  trouble, 
and  that  in  moments  of  faithlessness  we  rather 
doubt.  And  the  reason,  if  complex,  is  clear. 
In  the  last  fifty  years,  particularly  in  the  last 
twenty,  and  more  especially  in  the  last  five, 
literature  has  held  a  continuous  show.  Authors 
have  spawned  copy,  publishers  have  belched 
books,  and  novelists  have  pyramided,  remorse- 
lessly. 

The  entertainment  has  been  diverting,  but  to 
call  it  enduring  is  another  guitar.  According  to 
statistics  there  are  produced  in  the  United 
States  sixty  books  a  day,  or  two  and  a  half 
every  hour,  and  what  more  could  anyone  ask? 
Except,  indeed,  those  who  are  ambitious  to  be 
known.  For  in  that  flood  is  the  bankruptcy  of 
Fame.  So  many  claims  has  the  lady  on  her  that 
she  needs  must  fail  through  sheer  inability  to 
pay  her  debts. 

Without  pretending  to  know  more  than  we 


118  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

do,  it  is  easy  to  predict  that  this  sort  of  thing 
cannot  go  on  for  ever.  The  production  of  succotash 
is  not  a  misdemeanour.  The  love  of  light  yet 
heavy  reading  no  jurist  has  codified  into  crime. 
The  sale  of  stupidities  under  the  name  of  stories 
is  at  best,  or  at  worst,  but  a  question  of  taste, 
however  poor  that  taste  may  be.  Yet  nothing 
is  constant  but  change.  Across  this  swirl  of 
dish-water  there  is  passing  a  transverse  stream. 

We  lack  the  space,  which  is  a  detail,  for  we 
also  lack  the  art,  to  picture  that  stream  as  it 
deserves.  But  two  aspects  of  it  we  may  indicate. 
One  consists  in  the  fact  that  those  of  us  whose 
lives  are  not  devoted  to  fame  are  devoted  to  fun. 
Another  lies  in  the  multiplication  of  telephones, 
the  increasing  facility  of  communication,  the  com- 
ing abolition  of  time,  and  the  sequestration  of 
space. 

It  has  been  the  absence  of  these  very  things 
that  in  the  leisurely  past  has  been  most  con- 
ducive to  the  production  of  poppycock.  People 
nowadays  have  not  so  much  time  to  spare.  In 
the  future  they  will  have  less.  In  the  next 
generation,  what  with  air-ships,  telectroscopes, 
and  interplanetary  news,  they  will  have  none — 
or  rather  none  for  the  light  yet  heavy  reading 
of  to-day. 


TRUFFLES  AND  TOKAY  119 

Literature  then  will  be  electric.  Instead  of  fat 
books  stuffed  with  nauseous  phraseology  there 
will  be  brief  pages  of  brilliant  ideas.  Instead  of 
padding  their  wares  authors  will  aim  to  say  as 
much  as  possible  in  the  fewest  possible  words. 
When  that  day  comes  the  models  of  literary 
excellence  will  not  be  the  long  and  windy 
sentences  of  accredited  bores,  but  ample  brevi- 
ties, such  as  the  "N"  on  Napoleon's  tomb,  in 
which,  in  less  than  a  syllable,  an  epoch,  and 
the  glory  of  it,  is  resumed.  That  is  the  kind 
of  cutlet  the  restaurant  of  the  future  will  pro- 
vide, and  Fame  will  halo  those  who  serve  it 
quickest  with  truffles  and  tokay. 


X 
THE  ENCHANTED   CARPET 

THE  beauty  of  Az  Zahra  a  congress  of  poets 
in  active  collaboration  would  be  impotent  to 
depict.  Az  Zahra  was  the  palace  of  the  Caliphs 
of  Cordova.  Forty  thousand  men  worked  at  it 
ceaselessly  for  forty  years.  To-day  not  a  trace 
of  its  enchantments  remains. 

There  have  been  other  bewilderments  almost 
yet  not  quite  as  witching.  Nero  devised  a  resi- 
dence so  ineffably  charming  that  on  the  day  of 
reckoning  may  it  outbalance  a  few  of  his  sins! 
About  it  were  shimmering  porticos,  glittering 
avenues,  green  savannahs,  forest  reaches,  the 
call  of  bird  and  deer.  Within  were  domes  of 
sapphire,  floors  of  malachite,  crystal  columns, 
and  red-gold  walls.  It  has  crumbled. 

Before  the  peacock  throne  of  the  Great  Mogul 
there  was  an  inscription  that  ran:  "There  is  a 
Paradise.  And  it  is  this.  And  it  is  this."  Of 

that  paradise  the  legend  alone  endures.    The  en- 

120 


THE  ENCHANTED  CARPET  121 

ticements  of  Dar  Sargenu  are  rumoured  to  have 
exceeded  those  of  Eden.  They  have  evaporated. 
Trumpets  of  triumph  woke  Sardanapalus  from 
the  splendour  of  dreams  to  settings  yet  more 
splendid.  Like  the  dreams,  the  settings  have 
faded.  Beneath  Cyclopean  arches,  in  matchless 
magnificence,  Belsarazzur  lounged  and  laughed. 
The  arches  have  fallen,  the  magnificence  has 
gone.  At  any  evocation  of  Bel's  Home  of  the 
Height  the  pens  of  archaeologists  have  spluttered. 
Bel  has  vacated  the  skies,  his  earthly  tenement 
has  fallen.  The  sumptuousness  in  which  Semi- 
ramis  dwelt  exceeds  the  powers  of  prose.'  The 
lady  has  dwindled  into  myth  and  the  sump- 
tuousness with  her.  Mounting  upward  with 
the  stream  of  life  and  light  the  memory  of  the 
imperial  palace  at  Byzance  surges — a  gorgeous 
vision.  By  comparison  Versailles  becomes  an 
eyesore  and  Windsor  a  blur. 

For  sheer  loveliness  Az  Zahra  beat  all  these 
places  hollow.  It  was  a  fairyland  that  would 
have  thrown  the  architects  of  the  Great  Mogul's 
peacock  paradise  into  stupors  of  admiration. 
Beside  it  Nero's  surprising  construction  would 
have  looked  quite  squalid.  If  a  surmise  be 
worth  a  line  of  type,  we  may  assume  that  even 
the  gorgeous  vision  of  Byzance  would  have 


122  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

slunk  from  it  outdazzled.  And  there,  one  day,  or 
it  may  be  one  night,  a  caliph  stood  and  smiled. 

Well  he  might.  Before  him  was  one  of  those 
jasmines  in  flesh  and  blood  which  used  to  grow 
on  the  Guadalquivir.  And  smiling,  he  lassoed 
the  girl  again  and  again  with  rope  after  rope 
of  pearl.  But  even  in  fairyland,  even  in  Az 
Zahra,  caliphs  had  counsellors.  This  prince  had 
his.  They  were  prudent  persons,  and  they  re- 
presented to  him  that  the  lassoing  was  too 
lavish.  These  representations  the  caliph  treated 
as  cobwebs.  "  You  are  just  like  everyone  else," 
he  remonstrated;  "you  put  a  lot  of  value  on 
things  that  have  none."  Then  he  mused  a 
moment.  "Tell  me,"  he  continued,  "what  are 
pearls  good  for  except  to  punctuate  the  pretti- 
ness  of  a  pretty  girl?" 

The  syllogism,  propounded  in  unanswerable 
Arabic,  the  counsellors  were  insufficiently  casu- 
istic to  refute.  Moreover,  they  were  perhaps 
struck  by  the  profundity  or  the  truth  it  con- 
tained. The  pearl  is  sacred  to  prettiness.  Per- 
sonally, we  prefer  the  opal.  The  opal  is  a  pearl 
with  a  soul.  But  opals  are  not  jeune-fillesque. 
The  pearl  is.  Vishnu  could  find  nothing  better 
for  his  daughter.  Csesar  ransacked  Britannia 
to  find  enough  for  the  long  line  of  young 


THE  ENCHANTED  CARPET  123 

women  whom  he  had  on  his  list.  Nero  was 
less  thoughtful.  He  used  to  toss  them — the 
pearls,  not  the  young  women — about  the  room. 
Heliogabalus  liked  them  best  powdered  into 
pepper.  Cleopatra  preferred  hers  in  a  cocktail. 
The  possibility  of  that  entirely  vulgar  per- 
formance has  been  doubted.  But  the  dissolution 
of  a  pearl  can  be  effected,  though  the  flavour 
is  reported  to  be  less  appetising  than  vermouth. 
And  naturally.  The  pearl  is  a  disease.  A 
mortal  one,  too,  in  this  respect,  that  it  dies.  It 
is  only  the  jewel  that  does  die.  Diamonds,  for 
instance,  live  for  ever.  One  might  say  they 
have  always  lived.  They  count,  like  light, 
among  the  first  created  things.  Generated  in 
flame  before  the  earth  was  cool,  they  preceded 
the  primal  monera.  Pearls,  on  the  other  hand, 
are  charming  accidents,  and,  parenthetically, 
the  only  ornament  that  nowadays  a  man  can 
decently  wear.  Balzac  understood  that  fact 
very  thoroughly.  Previously,  Buckingham  had 
dripped  jewels  in  a  promenade  through  the 
Louvre.  Previously,  too,  Richelieu  had  dazzled 
Vienna  with  a  satrap's  suite.  Previously,  as 
well,  les  grands  seigneurs  made  themselves 
multi-coloured  as  quetzals.  Adornment  has 
been  the  fashion.  But  in  Balzac's  day  fashion 


124  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

had  changed.  It  was  much  simpler,  yet  not 
entirely  severe.  Then  it  so  fell  about  that  one 
evening  Balzac  appeared  at  the  opera  with  a 
stick,  of  which  the  handle  blazed  with  gems. 
The  glare  of  it  drew  the  attention  of  the  entire 
house.  It  was  barbaric.  It  was  more — it  was 
unique.  It  was  something  else,  too  —  it  was 
a  lesson.  Apart  from  the  stick  Balzac  was  not 
adorned.  The  other  men  present  were.  On 
the  morrow  they  stripped  the  jewels  from  their 
fingers  and  the  trinkets  from  their  shirts.  An- 
teriorly gentlemen  had  been  known  by  their 
dress;  since  then  they  have  been  known  by 
their  address.  That  is  quite  as  it  should  be, 
were  it  not  that  in  speech,  as  in  costume,  they 
have,  in  forcing  the  note,  become  entirely  lack- 
lustre. There  is  modern  progress. 

We  have  not  a  word  against  it.  But  if  our 
summary  has  been  serviceable  it  will  have  shown 
that  splendour  has  departed.  This  we  regret. 
We  prefer  silk  to  flannels,  velvet  to  tweed.  Had 
fortune  sufficiently  favoured  us  we  would  wade 
in  jewels.  We  see  nothing  distressing  in  Buck- 
ingham's promenade  through  the  Louvre.  Were 
we  able  we  would  eclipse  Richelieu's  entry  into 
Vienna.  Merely  for  the  manner  in  which  Nero 
lodged  himself  we  forgive  every  crime  he  com- 


THE  ENCHANTED  CARPET  125 

mitted.  Sardanapalus  is  our  patron  saint.  It 
may  be — though  we  doubt  it — that  he  was 
wickeder  than  Heliogabalus ;  but  what  of  it? 
He  was  magnificence  made  man.  Byzance  is 
rumoured  to  have  been  the  sewer  of  every  sin, 
yet  such  was  its  beauty  that  it  is  the  canker  of 
our  heart  that  we  could  not  have  lived  there. 
By  way  of  compensation  we  are  treated  to  cer- 
tain conveniences  and  equally  certain  ugliness. 
Cities  grow  less  uncomfortable  and  more  hideous 
day  by  day.  We  live  in  a  land  of  ready-made 
clothes,  in  an  epoch  that  cant  has  sterilised  and 
snobbery  debauched.  The  stage  is  as  mediocre 
as  life.  Even  the  Muse  has  fled.  In  lieu  of  the 
glare  of  genius  there  are  antiseptic  prepara- 
tions, and  automobiles  instead  of  art.  Only  in 
Nature  and  the  convulsions  of  her  does  splen- 
dour endure. 

Nature,  though  convulsive,  is  curiously  cautious. 
She  possesses  a  sort  of  a  stock  in  trade  of  which 
her  supply  is  uniform.  That  stock  is  energy. 
She  transforms  it,  transmutes  it,  and  transposes 
it.  But  never  does  she  suffer  a  speck  of  it  to 
get  away.  She  may  store  it  in  microbe  or 
man,  in  sporules  or  stars,  but  on  to  it  all  she 
holds  very  tight. 

These    premises    accepted,  it    follows  that    if 


126  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

splendour  has  vacated  this  neighbourhood  it 
must  be  somewhere  else.  The  pity  is  we 
cannot  stalk  it.  And  yet,  why  not?  In  the 
Arabian  Nights  there  is  a  story  about  an  en- 
chanted rug.  You  had  but  to  get  on  it,  and 
presto!  it  carried  you  wheresoever  you  willed. 
That  rug  has  been  regarded  as  fabulous.  It 
was,  perhaps,  woven  of  the  imagination,  but 
imagination  can  do  as  well  to-day.  All  it 
needs  is  a  foothold.  Lacking  that,  a  footnote. 
Here  is  one  about  Mars.  It  says  that  we  can 
see  the  canals  there,  and  sooner  or  later  we 
shall  see  the  streets. 

Seeing  is  one  thing,  hearing  is  another.  But 
recent  experiments  have  induced  the  idea  that 
we  shall  not  merely  see  the  streets  but  talk 
with  the  citizens.  The  idea  may  seem  fan- 
tastic, yet  it  is  the  charm  of  certain  ideas  that 
beginning  as  fancies  they  end  as  facts.  In  this 
instance  the  idea  is  to  telephone  along  a 
shaft  of  light.  That  is  simple  enough.  Sound 
that  can  be  projected  a  mile  can  be  projected 
a  million  miles.  It  can  be  projected  to  the  ends 
of  space,  if  ends  there  are.  Assuming,  then, 
the  possibility  of  such  projection,  and  there  is 
the  enchanted  rug. 

On  it  we  may  proceed  after  splendour,  and 


THE  ENCHANTED  CARPET  127 

presently  we  shall  stalk  it,  too.  Mars  is  many 
a  kalpa  our  senior.  In  science  and  sapience, 
manners  and  modes,  she  is,  as  such,  in  a  position 
to  give  us  points.  There  must  be  forces  she  has 
mastered  of  which  we  know  nothing,  senses 
she  has  cultivated  of  which  we  are  unaware, 
problems  she  has  solved  which  to  us  are  mys- 
teries, and  with  them  refinements  and  ideals 
unimagined  here. 

Granting,  then,  the  possibility  of  communi- 
cation, and  there  would  be  not  merely  the 
pleasure  but  the  profit  of  learning  from  her 
pundits  the  history  of  time,  of  receiving  from 
her  erudites  the  charts  of  space  and  of  flirting 
through  the  telescope  with  her  pretty  little 
girls.  And  who  knows  but  that  in  putting 
two  heads,  or  rather  two  worlds,  together, 
interplanetary  communication  may  result  in 
interplanetary  trips,  that  we  shall  visit  Mars, 
that  the  Maritians  will  visit  us,  that  there 
will  be  transsidereal  elopements,  marriages,  di- 
vorces, and,  in  their  triple  train,  romances  and 
tragedies  such  as  no  local  mortal  ever  dared 
to  dream  before. 

That  possibility,  however  suggestive,  is  trivial 
beside  another  it  evokes.  Mars,  though  our 
senior,  is  an  inferior  planet.  The  superiority  of 


128  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

planets   and  of    their  inhabitants    is   in    direct 
proportion  to  their  distance  from  the  sun. 

In  accordance  with  this  proposition — which  all 
self-respecting  novelists  have  adopted — the  in- 
habitants of  Mercury  may  be  represented  as 
human  hyenas,  those  of  Venus  as  commonplace 
brutes,  the  inhabitants  of  this  world  as  uninter- 
esting prisoners,  those  of  Mars  interesting  poets, 
while  the  denizens  of  the  distant  spheres  possess 
attributes  of  increasing  perfection  and  enjoy 
conditions  of  supernal  delight. 

If  then  we,  in  our  inferiority,  are  once 
able  to  ring  up  Mars,  it  will  be  found 
that  long  since  Mars  has  been  able  to  con- 
nect with  Jupiter,  the  latter  with  Saturn,  and 
so  on  to  the  Postmortem;  and  there  is  the 
circuit  complete.  Given,  then,  communication, 
and  the  romances  and  tragedies  that  may  re- 
sult sink  into  nothingness  beside  the  opulence 
to  be. 

We  shall  know  then,  not  merely  where  our 
early  splendour  has  gone,  but  what  splendour 
really  is.  Everything  being  possible,  we  may 
discover  that  it  consists  not  in  the  manipulation 
of  magnificence,  the  multiplication  of  master- 
pieces, the  sumptuousness  of  settings,  the  thrones 
and  diadems  of  the  elect,  but  in  the  spectacle  of 


THE  ENCHANTED  CARPET  129 

other  worlds  and  the  junkets  we  shall  take 
there. 

This  idea  has  a  false  appearance  of  originality 
which  we  hasten  to  disclaim.  It  is  old  as  the 
Sphinx.  It  is  older.  We  know  to-day  that  that 
monstrous  curiosity  was  disinterred  ages  ago 
from  beneath  masses  of  sand  under  which  it 
must  have  brooded  interminably.  But  the 
meaning  of  it  was  so  clear  that  Egypt  adopted 
it  for  a  crest.  The  claws  of  a  reptile,  the  wings 
of  a  bird,  the  body  of  a  beast,  a  human  head, 
and  there,  before  Darwin,  before  history,  by  a  civi- 
lisation that  has  left  no  other  souvenir,  in  traits 
great  and  grave  the  descent  of  man  was  told. 

There  remained  his  ascent.  Above  the  Sphinx 
Egypt  sent  circling  the  Phoenix.  The  one  ex- 
pounded the  mystery  of  life,  the  other  the  secret 
of  death.  That  secret  is  reincarnation.  "Shall 
I  believe  in  it?"  a  youngster  asked  Voltaire. 
"Believe  in  it?"  the  ogre  shouted,  "believe  in  it 
by  all  means.  There  is  nothing  more  poetic." 
Nor  is  there.  It  has  a  defect,  however.  It  ex- 
plains everything.  It  explains  why  some  of  us 
are  rich  and  some  are  poor,  why  some  are  smart 
and  many  are  not.  It  explains  the  reason  of 
joys  and  sorrows,  the  cause  of  smiles  and  tears. 
It  explains  these  things,  others  too,  and  very 
I 


130  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

simply,  on  the  ground  that  this  life,  which  is  the 
refuse  of  many  deaths,  has  acquired  merits  and 
demerits,  in  accordance  with  which  are  punish- 
ments and  rewards.  It  explains  everything  so 
fully  that  it  leaves  you  nothing  to  do  but  to 
bore  yourself  to  extinction.  That  is  its  defect. 
Here  is  its  charm.  It  sends  the  reincarnated 
junketing  to  spheres  where  life  is  larger  than 
it  can  be  here.  It  does  more.  In  weaving  a  gar- 
land of  migrations  that  stretches  throughout 
the  universe  it  sows  our  seed  in  every  world 
and  marries  our  memoirs  with  that  of  the  sky. 

There  is  the  enchanted  rug  again,  and  there- 
with a  quality  of  splendour  so  resplendent  that  be- 
side it  the  witcheries  of  Az  Zahra  are  reduced  to 
mud  pies.  The  main  difficulty  about  it  consists 
in  the  obvious  fact  that  it  is  all  too  devilish 
good  to  be  true.  Any  entertainment  of  it  is 
comparable  only  to  fancying  that  an  uncle 
whom  you  never  had  has  left  you  a  billion  he 
never  possessed.  Dreams  are  exhilarating,  but 
not  exact. 

Yet  if  splendour  be  not  stalkable  in  other 
spheres  it  is  not  to  be  quarried  here.  This  world 
has  done  with  it.  It  is  one  of  the  platitudes  of 
philosophy  that  history  repeats  itself ;  history 
does  nothing  of  the  kind.  The  one  deduction 


THE  ENCHANTED  CARPET  131 

deducible  from  its  divagations  proves  that 
nothing  is  constant  but  change. 

In  the  change  of  things  the  world  has  de- 
teriorated. Artistically  it  is  bankrupt.  Ethi- 
cally it  is  nothing  to  boast  of.  Ambitions  have 
veered,  tendencies  altered.  Heredity,  environ- 
ment— the  influence  of  snobbery  and  its  sister 
cant — have  modified  manners  and  sugared 
speech.  But  appetites  have  been  left  unaffected. 
Eliminate  the  penal  code  and  we  should  be 
assisting  now  at  the  frank  freedom  the  past 
beheld — with  the  difference  that  the  settings 
would  be  less  sumptuous  and  the  architecture 
more  trite.  In  but  one  thing  has  the  world 
improved.  One  is  a  great  many.  Scientifically 
there  has  been  a  quintuple  discount  on  every- 
thing that  was.  There  is  no  telling  how  far 
science  may  advance  nor  yet  into  what  wonder- 
lands its  enchanted  rug  may  take  us.  In  order, 
then,  that  we  may  not  seem  to  know  more  than 
we  do  we  will  not  attempt  to  prophesy.  Be- 
sides, there  is  an  old  adage  that  the  future  sits 
in  the  lap  of  the  gods.  Or  does  it  not  lie  there  ? 
As  often  as  not  it  has  promised  most  falsely. 

It  may  be,  therefore,  that  science,  on  which  we 
all  count  so  much,  may  turn  and  cheat  us.  It 
may  be  that  our  most  intoxicating  dreams,  re- 


132  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

incarnation,  and  interstellar  trips,  will  be  recog- 
nised as  delirium.  But  if  our  proposition  be 
sound,  and  nothing  is  constant  but  change,  then 
from  the  coil  of  things  other  perspectives  will 
beckon.  Said  Baudelaire:  "Pour  trouver  du 
nouveau  plongeons  dans  le  ntfant."  The  rug  is 
more  convenient.  Borne  on  its  arabesques,  a 
condition  of  affairs  is  disclosed  in  which  love 
will  be  regarded  as  a  disease ;  wealth  as  a 
disaster;  beauty  as  a  horror;  genius  as  stu- 
pidity; magnificence,  madness,  and  originality 
vulgar.  It  will  be  wicked  to  be  witty ;  righteous 
to  be  dull.  The  aim  of  life  will  be  the  attain- 
ment of  complete  colourlessness,  and  the  ideal 
entire  nullity. 

The  perspective  may  seem  remote.  From 
our  rug  it  looks  very  neighbourly.  The  sun 
of  splendour  set  long  since.  The  dawn  of 
nullity  is  breaking. 

Salvation,  if  salvation  there  be,  lies  solely 
in  extraneous  succour.  Precisely  as  dynasties 
are  rejuvenated  by  fresher  blood,  so  may 
humanity  yet  be  reclaimed  by  superterrestrial 
conceptions.  On  the  possibility  of  these  con- 
ceptions we  have  already  touched,  yet  theoreti- 
cally merely,  for  the  sake  of  their  dreamlike 
beauty.  To  their  support  Mr  Tesla  not  long 


THE  ENCHANTED  CARPET  133 

since  brought  something  more  substantial.  He 
brought  a  fact.  Mr  Tesla  announced  that  he  had 
been  favoured  with  a  message  from  another 
sphere.  Personally,  we  did  not  presume  to  doubt 
him.  But  his  brother  scientists  assumed  an 
attitude  of  incredulity  more  or  less  impolite. 
That  was  to  be  expected.  In  the  announcement 
of  any  novelty  there  is  something  curiously 
insulting  to  those  labouring  in  the  vineyards 
where  that  novelty,  or  the  announcement  of 
it,  appears. 

Yet  we  need  not  bother  over  that.  Since 
Mr  Tesla  has  received  a  message  there  is  no 
reason,  why  he  should  not  reply,  no  reason 
either,  why  communication  should  not  result, 
nor  yet  why  we  should  not  learn  what  fashions 
are  in  vogue  in  the  upper  circles  of  the  universe, 
and  what  customs  the  smart  sets  of  the  best 
planets  observe.  Thereupon  society,  being  in- 
nately snobbish,  will  proceed  to  follow  suit, 
the  dawn  of  nullity  will  break  to  pieces,  and  an 
era  of  such  general  gorgeousness  ensue  as  shall 
make  Sardanapalus  hide  his  diminished  ghost. 
In  short,  even  in  the  limits  of  this  paper  there 
are  no  limits  to  the  joys  in  store  —  provided, 
of  course,  that  the  message  to  Mr  Tesla  did  not 
reach  him  when  journeying  on  an  enchanted  rug. 


XI 

THE   GOLDEN   CALF 

NINON  DE  L'ENCLOS  wore  her  wrinkles  on  her 
heels.  How  she  managed  it  she  never  told. 
The  secret  of  her  smartness  evaporated  with 
her.  The  secret  of  contemporary  smartness  is 
less  clever  and  more  clear. 

It  consists  of  three  things.  One  is  youth. 
There  are  belles  and  beaux  who  are  no  longer 
young.  They  are  belles  and  beaux  in  their 
own  imagination.  Imagination  is  not  a  pre- 
requisite. Youth  is — so,  too,  is  coin — and  there 
is  another  little  thing,  entirely  atmospheric, 
which  is  as  difficult  to  acquire  as  it  is  to  describe 
We  have  heard  a  rumour  that  in  Bloomsbury 
it  is  known  as  the  je  ne  sais  quoi.  The  meaning 
of  the  phrase  is  beyond  us.  That  may  be  due 
to  the  accent.  In  Belgravia,  though  the  accent 
is  encounterable,  the  phrase  never  is.  People 
there  either  possess  the  little  thing  or  they 
don't.  When  they  don't  they  are  bounders. 
Returning  now  to  that  which  a  certain  famili- 
arity with  the  classics  enables  us  to  call  our 

134 


THE  GOLDEN  CALF  135 

muttons:  given  youth  and  money,  no  one 
need  despair  of  the  other.  Old  people,  however 
rich,  can't  acquire  it.  Poor  people,  however 
young,  can't  either.  The  two  things  must  beat 
as  one.  The  high  regard  in  which  they  are 
held,  a  certain  familiarity  with  archaeology  en- 
ables us  to  catalogue  as  antediluvian.  Always 
has  youth  been  adored,  always  has  money  been 
worshipped.  Between  them  they  have  managed 
to  monopolise  the  attention  of  every  drawing- 
room,  prehistoric,  pagan,  and  polite.  Beauty 
and  brains  may  be  —  and  have  been  —  talked 
away,  but  never  money.  However  obtained, 
it  is  holy.  Virtue  and  vice  have  been  —  and 
always  will  be  —  climatic,  geographic,  relative 
at  that,  but  youth  is  unquestionable.  There 
it  is,  and  where  it  is  there,  too,  is  a  great  stir- 
ring of  the  affections. 

Affections  are  just  like  fashions :  they  come  and 
go.  By  the  same  token,  what  is  smart  to-day 
will  be  shabby  genteel  to-morrow.  The  only 
things  for  ever  modish  are  youth  and  money. 
To  the  list  we  might  add  death.  Death, 
though,  has  its  disadvantages.  So,  alas,  has 
life.  Uncertain  as  Wall  Street  and  false  as 
an  obituary,  its  obvious  defect  is  its  brevity. 
But  the  obvious  is  misleading.  It  is  not  life 


136  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

that  is  brief,  it  is  youth.  And  what  is  youth 
without  money? 

A  page  once  put  to  himself  that  question. 
Quite  young,  equally  impudent  and  abomin- 
ably good-looking,  one  day,  or  rather  one  night, 
across  the  wide  leisures  and  rigid  ceremonial  of 
the  Court  of  Spain,  a  princess  smiled  at  him 
and  beckoned.  That  was  enough.  There  and 
then  he  was  sent  to  another  world,  to  a  better 
one — to  the  tropics  which  Columbus  had  found. 
He  landed  at  Hayti,  or  rather  at  Hispaniola,  as 
the  island  was  then  more  musically  named 
and,  with  easy  gallantry,  assisted  in  eliminat- 
ing the  natives. 

Caesar  used  to  create  a  solitude  and  call  it 
Peace.  Spain  used  to  do  the  same  thing  and 
call  it  Civilisation.  In  furthering  her  designs, 
the  young  chap  learned  that  a  neighbouring 
island  was  a  mine  of  gold.  It  occurred  to  him 
that  if  he  got  enough  of  it  he  might  get  the 
princess  also.  Through  processes  with  which 
it  is  idle  to  encumber  this  paragraph,  he 
succeeded.  When  he  left  that  island,  which 
to-day  is  known  as  Puerto  Rico,  he  had  gold 
to  melt. 

Between  the  foregoing  sentences  there  are 
years.  There  are  torrents  of  blood.  There  are 


THE  GOLDEN  CALF  137 

all  the  civilising  influences  of  Spain.  Inciden- 
tally, the  young  chap  had  grown  old.  Whether 
he  remembered  the  princess  in  problematic. 
That  he  missed  his  good  looks  is  clear. 

Here  the  plot  thickens.  Meanwhile  he  had 
heard  that  a  little  to  the  north  was  a  land 
on  which  spouted  a  fountain  whose  waters 
effaced  old  age.  To  recover  his  youth  he  sailed 
that  way.  Were  we  writing  fiction  we  should 
so  arrange  as  to  let  him  find  the  fountain,  find 
his  youth,  find  the  princess  tender  and  true, 
or  better,  perhaps,  in  view  of  his  rejuvenation, 
find  her  daughter,  and  even  her  granddaughter, 
more  to  his  taste.  But  this  is  not  fiction.  It 
is  the  history  of  Ponce  de  Leon — not  the  hotel 
at  St  Augustine,  but  the  adventurer  after 
whom  it  was  named.  The  fountain  was  not 
found  by  him,  but  Florida  was,  and  with  it, 
not  youth  but  fame. 

The  fountain  which  he  sought  represents  the 
quintessence  of  a  dream  which  many  smart 
people  have  shared.  It  hallucinated  the  great 
Alexander.  He  tramped  over  India  in  search  of 
it.  Bacon  was  visited  by  it.  He  tried  to 
produce  its  waters  in  a  still.  They  represented 
to  him  not  youth  merely,  but  gold  besides.  His 
still  produced  nothing  so  important,  but  if  we 


138  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

may  believe  everything  we  hear — and  we  are 
always  most  anxious  to — there  are  other 
alembics  which  created  both. 

Of  these  the  most  ample  was  the  property 
of  a  man  who  made  himself  a  contemporary 
of  the  Pompadour.  At  the  time  he  was  quite 
young — or  appeared  to  be.  But  people  quite  old 
remembered  him  as  still  quite  young  when 
they  were  very  youthful.  Different  people  re- 
membered him  under  different  names.  The 
Danish  Ambassador  remembered  him  as  the  Vi- 
comte  de  Bellamye,  whom  he  had  met,  three 
or  four  decenniae  back,  in  Venice.  The  Baron 
Stoch  had  dined  with  him  in  Lisbon,  where  he 
was  known  as  the  Due  de  Betmar.  That,  too,  was 
a  couple  of  generations  back.  An  antiquity,  in 
recalling  the  red-heeled  days  of  the  Regency, 
recalled  that  he  was  then  the  Marquis  de 
Montferrat.  When,  later,  he  made  himself 
a  contemporary  of  the  Pompadour,  he  made 
himself  also  Count  de  Saint-Germain.  Appar- 
ently nothing  was  easier. 

Meanwhile,  though  his  titles  had  changed, 
his  looks  had  not.  The  circumstance  is  not  as 
surprising  as  it  otherwise  might  be.  According 
to  his  own  account,  he  had  assisted  at  the 
Council  of  Trent.  Other  accounts  which  he 


THE  GOLDEN  CALF  139 

gave  of  himself  were  equally  conciliatory.  He 
had  supped  with  Pilate  and  thrown  dice  with 
Faustine.  These  accounts,  while  admired,  were 
not  always  accepted.  In  smart  circles  his  origin 
was  regarded  as  fantastic,  but  not  fabulous.  He 
was  said  to  be  the  son  of  a  lackey  and  a  queen. 
In  the  antitheses  of  "  Buy  Bias "  the  story  is 
told.  It  is  told  so  well  that  it  would  be  an 
impertinence  to  repeat  it.  "Don't  touch  the 
dead  of  Dante,"  shouted  Foscolo ;  "  they  frighten 
the  living."  The  grave  of  Hugo's  dead  shall 
be  to  us  as  sacred. 

To  pass  from  it  to  the  gay,  the  Count  de  Saint- 
Germain  wore  corsets.  Behind  them  was  a 
stone  wrapped  in  flesh.  In  spite  of  which,  or, 
perhaps,  precisely  on  that  account,  he  kept 
mothers  awake  and  brought  their  daughters 
dreams.  He  had  other  accomplishments.  He 
played  on  the  violin  so  deliciously  that  he  might 
have  been  born  with  one  in  his  mouth.  He 
was  good  at  chemistry  and  good  at  quoits.  His 
conversation  was  jewelled.  Voltaire  was  not 
wittier,  Diderot  not  more  learned.  His  famili- 
arity with  the  past  was  such  that  it  enabled 
him  to  speak  of  King  Arthur  as  though  he 
were  his  first  cousin,  and  of  Charlemagne  as 
though  they  had  been  jilted  by  the  same  woman. 


140  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

His  resources  were  as  enigmatic  as  his  age. 
Without  anything  so  material  as  a  rent  roll, 
he  lived  magnificently,  entertained  royally,  and 
always  paid  cash.  When  he  gambled  he  had 
the  tact  to  lose.  He  had  the  tact  and,  what 
is  more,  the  ability  to  please.  The  mystery 
of  him  bewitched  a  monarch.  But  that  was 
child's  play.  He  bewitched  gems.  He  made 
little  diamonds  big.  He  bewitched  women.  He 
made  dowagers  demoiselles. 

A  man  lives  as  long  as  he  desires,  a  women 
lives  as  long  as  she  is  desirable.  A  princess 
whose  desirability  was  declining  asked  his  aid. 
He  gave  it  in  a  phial,  the  contents  of  which  he 
told  her  to  drink  on  the  morrow.  The  princess 
took  the  phial  home,  remarked  to  Radegonde, 
her  maid — a  respectable  person  of  forty — that 
it  contained  a  remedy  for  cramps,  and  went 
to  bed.  During  the  night  Radegonde,  who  had 
supped  on  lobster,  and  who,  in  consequence,  was 
somewhat  incommoded,  turned  to  the  phial  for 
relief.  In  the  morning,  when  she  appeared  to 
dress  my  lady's  hair,  the  princess  cursed  her, 
as  only  a  princess  can  curse,  and  rang  for 
Radegonde.  "  But  I  am  Radegonde,"  the  poor 
thing  expostulated ;  and,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  so 
she  was,  only,  instead  of  being  a  respectable 


THE  GOLDEN  CALF  141 

person  of  forty,  the  cramp  remedy  had  turned 
her  into  a  soubrette  of  sixteen. 

The  Gazette  de  France  states  that  all  Paris 
exclaimed  at  the  miracle.  The  Gazette  adds: 
"  Mais  M.  le  Comte  de  Saint-Germain  4tait  parti." 
We  won't  attempt  to  follow  him.  It  would 
take  too  long.  We  won't  attempt  to  explain. 
It  would  take  too  long  also.  Besides,  we  lack 
the  ability.  The  point  is  that  thirty  years 
later,  when  he  concluded  to  die  —  and  for  no 
other  reason,  apparently,  than,  as  he  said, 
because  he  was  tired  of  living — the  Landgrave 
of  Hesse,  whose  guest  he  had  been,  took  his 
papers,  which  he  punctiliously  and  privately 
destroyed.  Among  them  was  the  secret.  It 
had  come  from  Flamel. 

Flamel  was  a  scrivener,  poor  as  a  rat,  but 
much  more  honest.  His  table  was  set  between 
the  pillars  of  the  Church  of  Saint-Jacques.  For 
the  privilege  he  paid  eight  sols  parisis  a  year. 
The  amount,  though  small,  was  hard  to  make. 
To  enlarge  his  business  he  set  up  a  book-shop. 
There,  presently,  a  stranger  appeared  with  a 
manuscript.  It  was  beautifully  illuminated  and 
profoundly  abstruse.  Flamel,  unable  to  make 
head  or  tail  of  it,  bought  it  just  for  that  reason. 
He  not  merely  bought  it,  he  paid  for  it. 


142  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

A  man  who  buys  a  book  which  he  can't  read 
is  a  bibliophile.  A  man  who  buys  a  book  and 
omits  to  pay  for  it  is  a  bibliofilou.  These 
definitions  help  to  a  better  understanding  of 
Flamel.  The  understanding  will  be  improved 
when  it  is  added  that  every  leisure  moment  he 
gave  to  a  study  of  the  manuscript.  For  years 
he  devoted  himself  to  it.  First  the  tail  appeared, 
then  a  glimmer  of  comprehension ;  finally,  when, 
after  inordinate  vigils,  the  full  light  was  his, 
precisely  as  Monte  Cristo  he  could  have  cried: 
"  The  world  is  mine ! " 

Flamel  had  discovered  how  to  get  rich  and, 
incidentally,  how  to  grow  young.  In  the  "  Traite 
des  Lavures,"  a  work  which  he  left,  and  which 
is  still  on  view  at  the  Bibliotheque  Nationale, 
he  expresses  his  pleasure  as  follows :  "It  was 
about  noon,  on  a  Monday,  that  I  succeeded. 
But  truly  I  tell  here  a  secret  which  thou  shalt 
find  rarely  written.  Yet  please  God  that  all 
may  make  gold  and  youth  at  will,  and,  after 
the  fashion  of  the  sainted  patriarchs,  lead  fat 
cattle  to  pasture." 

That  is  all  very  well  as  far  as  it  goes.  But  it 
does  not  go  far  enough.  It  never  gets  to  the 
secret.  Yet  there  was  one.  There  must  have 
been  one.  After  that  Monday  noon  Flamel, 


THE  GOLDEN  CALF  143 

whom  the  payment  of  eight  sols  had  previously 
burdened,  became  prodigal  in  philanthropy.  He 
established  fourteen  hospitals,  laid  out  seven 
cemeteries,  endowed  a  dozen  churches,  and  built 
as  many  chapels.  Some  of  them  are  Objects  of 
Interest  still.  More  than  that,  their  origin  and 
endowments  are  matters  of  record.  What  is 
yet  more  interesting  is  the  fact  that,  several 
centuries  later,  just  previous  to  the  apparition 
of  Saint-Germain,  it  was  currently  reported  and 
generally  believed  that  Flamel,  amazingly  young, 
outrageously  rich,  yet  no  longer  philanthropic, 
was  filling  other  cities  with  the  uproar  of  his 
debauches.  Whether  or  not  it  was  he  who, 
under  the  name  of  the  Vicomte  de  Bellamye, 
erupted  in  Venice  and,  as  the  Due  de  Betmar, 
entertained  Baron  Stoch  at  Lisbon,  is  a  detail. 
Were  we  writing  fiction  we  should  assume  it 
to  be  a  fact.  The  point  is  that  he  really  did 
have  a  secret  which  others  succeeded  in  shar- 
ing. There  was  Talbot,  for  instance ;  there 
was  Lascaris;  and,  last  and  least,  Cagliostro. 

These  people  all  knew  a  little  more  than 
the  rest  of  us.  Among  other  things,  Talbot 
knew  how  to  forge,  but  not  how  to  do  so 
undetectedly.  As  a  result,  he  hid  in  a  Welsh 
hamlet.  The  innkeeper  there  showed  him  a  bit 


144  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

of  parchment  and  an  ivory  ball.  Both  had  been 
taken  from  the  tomb  of  a  bishop.  The  latter 
had  been  suspected  of  being  rich.  He  was  sus- 
pected, too,  of  having  concealed  his  riches  in 
his  shroud.  As  a  result,  the  tomb  was  rifled. 
Only  the  parchment  and  the  ball  were  found. 
This  booty  the  innkeeper  had  acquired  in  ex- 
change for  a  mug  of  ale.  Talbot  offered  a  guinea. 
Already  he  had  discovered  that  the  parchment 
was  a  recipe  for  the  manufacture  of  money. 
The  guinea  accepted,  Talbot,^who  had  his  reasons 
for  avoiding  London,  got  to  Germany,  got  to 
work,  and,  what  is  more  notable,  got  gold.  He 
projected  it  as  a  hose  projects  water.  He  waded 
in  it.  Everyone  who  came  near  him  did  likewise. 
He  turned  pebbles  into  coin  as  readily  as  we 
turn  paper  into  copy.  But  it  was  the  contents 
of  the  ivory  ball,  a  white  powder,  that  did  the 
trick.  Though  he  could  read  the  recipe  he 
could  not  compound  it.  When  the  powder  gave 
out  so  did  his  money. 

But  no  matter.  There  was  another  and  a 
more  capable  person  about  just  then.  Who  he 
was  and  what  he  was  never  have  been  and,  now, 
never  will  be  known.  He  did  not  float.  He  was 
not  fluid.  But  he  appeared,  disappeared,  re- 
appeared, changing  in  these  changes  everything, 


THE  GOLDEN  CALF  145 

even  to  his  appearance.  Without  age,  without 
identity,  his  presence,  more  often  suspected  than 
perceived,  persisted  for  a  century.  He  had 
as  many  names  as  Vishnu,  perhaps  as  many 
avatars.  Of  his  names  the  most  certain  is 
Lascaris.  Of  his  avatars  the  most  palpable  is 
prelacy.  He  entered  history  clothed  with  the 
dignities  of  a  Lesbian  Archimandrite.  Whether 
he  brought  with  him  gusts  of  those  songs  which 
blew  through  Mitylene  one  may  surmise  and 
never  know.  But  this  is  clear:  The  multiple 
and  sufficiently  attested  transmutations  which 
he  effected  were  accomplished  either  through 
the  medium  of  previously  trained  adepts,  or, 
when  personally  conducted,  were  produced  for 
purposes  entirely  altruistic. 

In  a  village  at  nightfall  a  stranger  appears, 
He  has  come  una waited,  as  death  and  thieves 
do.  He  enters  the  poorest  home,  asks  for  old 
iron,  turns  it  into  gold,  and  evaporates.  It  was 
his  custom  and  his  poetry.  Someone  who  knew 
what  poetry  was  said :  "  On  the  morrow  he  was 
sought,  but  he  had  vanished  like  the  holy  appari- 
tions which  sometimes  visit  the  heart  of  man." 

The  apparition  that  succeeded  him  was  more 
tangible,  more  brilliant,  more  real.     Carlyle  used 
his  worst  ink  to  dirty  it.     But  Time  has  its  re- 
K 


146  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

venges.  Carlyle  is  handsomely  bound  and  never 
read.  The  memory  of  Cagliostro  is  immortal. 
Born  without  scruples,  he  omitted  to  acquire 
any.  A  cheerful  disdain  of  righteousness  is 
highly  conducive  to  fame.  People  more  cen- 
sorious than  ourselves  regard  that  disdain  as 
conducive  to  infamy.  It  may  be  so.  But  in  the 
spaciousness  of  the  perspectives  of  history  you 
can't  tell  t'other  from  which.  In  lieu  of  scruples 
Cagliostro  had  charms,  which  is  more  than  can 
be  said  of  Carlyle.  He  knew  all  languages,  in- 
cluding the  latter's  dialect,  which  was  a  feat  in 
itself,  and  including  silence,  too,  for  silence  is  a 
language  also.  He  had  other  accomplishments 
more  surprising  still.  He  knew  how  to  make  his 
clients  believe  anything  they  wished.  He  knew 
how  to  make  the  dead  appear  in  mirrors  and 
the  quick  in  carafes.  He  knew  how  to  turn 
ugliness  into  beauty,  age  into  youth,  hemp  into 
silk,  and  lead  into  gold.  He  knew  how  to  be 
two  thousand  years  old.  He  knew  how  to  hide 
beneath  the  plumage  of  a  peacock  the  beak  and 
talons  of  a  bird  of  prey. 

Charming  and  cruel,  he  could  captivate  and 
coerce.  One  of  his  conquests  was  Louis  XVI. 
By  royal  edict  it  was  treasonable  to  speak  ill  of 
him.  A  greater  conquest  was  Paris.  Released 


THE  GOLDEN  CALF  147 

from  the  Bastile,  where  he  had  been  put  because 
of  that  tiresome  old  story  of  the  diamond  neck- 
lace, festivals  were  given,  streets  were  illumi- 
nated, Paris  went  mad.  Boulogne  did,  too. 
When  he  took  ship  there  five  thousand  people 
implored  his  benediction  on  their  knees.  His 
release  was  felt  to  be  a  blessing,  his  departure  a 
curse.  The  multitude  called  him  the  Benefactor 
of  Mankind — big  words,  which  he  rewarded  by 
foretelling  the  fall  of  the  Bastile.  He  foretold 
what  would  occur  the  following  week,  the 
following  month,  the  ensuing  year,  or  ten  years 
later  in  Madrid,  in  Vienna,  in  Pekin.  He  fore- 
told everything,  except,  indeed,  that  the  Seer  of 
Chelsea  should  write  him  down  and  we  should 
write  him  up. 

Clairvoyance  has  its  limits ;  so,  too,  has  cheek. 
Cagliostro  possessed  both,  and  with  them  a 
secret — that  of  not  having  any,  and  yet  appear- 
ing to  have  one.  It  is  the  greatest  of  all.  His 
predecessors,  Flamel  and  Co.,  were  more  inven- 
tive. Their  discoveries  are  lost,  thank  fortune, 
yet — barring  the  probable — everything  being 
possible,  science  may  find  them  again,  and 
perhaps,  too,  the  ability  to  radiate  that  atmos- 
pheric seduction  which  Bloomsbury  calls  the 
je  ne  sais  quoi. 


148  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

We  hope  not.  Smartness,  restricted  to  the 
few,  now  disturbs  the  many.  With  a  different 
kettle  of  fish  the  words  of  Flamel  would  be 
fulfilled.  The  possession  of  youth  and  gold 
would  be  universal,  the  pasturing  of  cattle  ditto. 
That  is  not  a  consummation  to  be  wished. 
Though  smartness  and  its  appanages  would 
then  be  common,  human  nature,  being  invari- 
able, would  remain  unchanged.  People  would 
want,  as  people  have  ever  wanted,  just  what 
they  have  not  got.  Instead  of  trying  to  be 
smart  everybody  would  succeed  in  being  stupid. 
Youth  and  its  loveliness  would  no  longer  al- 
lure and  poverty  be  the  world's  desire. 


XII 
FASHIONS   IN   POISONS 

POISONS  may  be  toxicolloquially  catalogued  as 
triply  fascinating.  First,  because  of  the  mystery 
of  them ;  second,  because  behind  the  mystery 
loom  the  great  figures  of  the  Borgias  and  the 
Brinvilliers ;  and,  finally,  because  they  involve 
the  whole  subject  of  murder  considered  as  an  art. 

The  term  "art"  is  used  for  the  reason  that 
De  Quincey  so  labelled  it.  He  had  a  pretext. 
Had  he  wished  he  could  have  had  a  text. 

Once  upon  a  time  people  who  got  in  the  way 
were  dosed  with  hemlock.  Death  came  very 
agreeably.  It  neither  convulsed  nor  distorted. 
It  left  the  beauty  of  the  victim  unmarred,  the 
features  uncontracted,  the  mouth  half  closed. 
It  left  no  trace  either.  There  is  art.  Whoso 
says  art  says  Greece.  In  Greece  poisoners  were 
artists.  That  is,  a  number  of  centuries  ago. 

In  the  days  that  succeeded  them  art  persisted 
but  methods  changed.  Occasionally  people  who 
were  in  the  way  did  not  wait  to  be  killed,  but 
killed  themselves.  That  simplified  matters. 

Occasionally,  too,  they  were  urged  to  die.      It 
149 


150  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

was  the  young  emperors  of  old  Rome  who  did 
the  urging.  Yet  sometimes  they  did  not 
bother.  A  lady  named  Locusta  discovered  a 
way  of  cooking  mushrooms  which  was  found 
to  be  very  serviceable.  Nero  served  it  to  his 
brother  Britannicus.  Agrippina  set  it  before 
her  husband,  Claudian.  Domitian  administered 
it  first  to  his  father,  Vespasian ;  next  to  his 
brother,  Titus.  They  were  all  in  the  way.  The 
mushroom  stew  dispersed  them.  What  the  in- 
gredients were  we  may  surmise  and  never  know. 
It  was  an  imperial  dish,  however,  and,  as  such, 
reserved  for  the  purple.  Patricians,  in  their  in- 
ability to  obtain  it,  invented  a  needle  and  a  ring. 

Lampridus,  or  Spartian,  or  whoever  the  brute 
may  have  been  that  abridged  a  chronicle  in 
the  "  Scriptores  Historse  Augustse,"  describes  the 
needle.  It  had  a  poisoned  tip.  Those  who  liked 
gave  a  little  prick  to  those  they  did  not  like,  and 
the  latter  fell  dead.  This  performance  usually 
occurred  in  the  Forum,  where  the  crowd  was 
such  that  the  assassin  could  lose  himself  in  it. 

Samples  of  the  rings,  recovered  from  the  ruins 
of  Pompeii,  any  one  may  examine  at  Naples. 
They  suggest  nothing  so  much  as  vipers  of  gold. 
A  receptacle,  moved  by  a  spring,  contained  poison 
which  exuded  at  a  touch.  At  table,  in  the  ani- 


FASHIONS  IN  POISONS  151 

mation  of  small  talk,  the  assassin  made  but  a 
gesture.  On  the  food  of  his  neighbour  a  drop 
would  fall.  The  deed  was  done. 

There  also  was  art — too  precious  perhaps  to 
be  lost.  It  is  rumoured  that  Naples  is  not  now 
the  sole  depository  of  these  playthings.  In  New 
York,  a  few  years  ago,  a  death  occurred  which 
a  jewelled  snake,  resting  for  a  second  on  a  glass 
of  champagne,  is  believed  to  have  occasioned. 
The  belief  may  be  unfounded,  yet  the  possibilities 
in  it  are  splendidly  ornate. 

Possibilities  not  similar  but  cognate  were 
thoroughly  appreciated  during  the  Renaissance. 
That  was  the  age  when  murder  really  flourished. 
There  were  sixty  recognised  modes  of  elimin- 
ating, without  fuss  or  scandal,  such  people  as 
got  in  the  way.  It  would  be  fastidious  to 
describe  them  all.  The  most  fashionable  was 
Aqua  Toffana,  which  remained  in  vogue  up  to 
the  beginning  of  the  last  century,  and  of  which 
to-day  we  know  only  that,  presumably  a  pre- 
paration of  arsenic,  it  was  without  colour, 
taste,  or  odour.  But  it  was  very  effective. 
Adepts  smeared  it  on  one  side  of  the  blade  of 
a  golden  knife,  with  which  they  then  cut  a 
peach,  and  after  giving  the  poisoned  half  to 
the  lady  who  had  incurred  their  jealousy,  ate 


152  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

the  other  half  in  her  presence.  It  is  difficult 
to  regard  that  as  otherwise  than  artistic,  too. 
But  there  was  another  preparation  still  more 
so.  It  acted  not  at  once,  but  years  later.  The 
victim  became  toothless,  bald,  and  dessicated, 
expiring  after  an  agony  relentless  and  pro- 
longed. Artistic  and  ingenious  as  well  were 
the  poisoned  candles,  poisoned  gloves,  and 
poisoned  flowers,  with  which,  under  the  Borgias, 
death  was  distributed  in  Italy,  and  which  the 
Medici  introduced  into  France.  These  things 
left  no  traces.  Not  that  it  would  have 
mattered  much  if  they  had.  The  Medici  cared 
nothing  for  the  existence  which  they  led  in 
the  minds  of  other  people.  The  Borgias  cared 
less.  For  that  matter,  the  Borgian  mode  of 
life  is  to-day  untellable  except  in  Latin — the 
one  language,  parenthetically,  which  is  suited 
to  love,  to  religion,  and  to  crime.  But  the 
callousness  of  the  clan,  a  callousness  legendary 
in  Lucretia  and  accentuated  in  Alexander,  cul- 
minates in  Cesare. 

In  history's  caverns  there  are  monsters  more 
masterful  than  he,  but  none  more  cold-blooded. 
A  galley-slave  in  Mars  is  as  familiar  with  the 
sonnets  of  Petrarch  as  he  was  with  shame. 
The  term  had  no  meaning  for  him.  Without 


FASHIONS  IN  POISONS  153 

heart,  without  nerves,  without  sensibilities  of 
any  kind,  he  turned  sin  into  a  system,  crime 
into  a  code,  and  thus  equipped,  trusting  no  one 
and  assassinating  those  who  trusted  him,  cleared 
his  way  almost  to  the  pontificate. 

Alexander,  his  father,  exhaled  death.  He  had 
cups,  perfumes,  and  even  eucharists  which  pro- 
duced it.  And  this  pontiff,  from  whose  presence 
poison  emanated,  trembled  before  his  son.  It 
was  as  well,  perhaps.  But  perhaps,  too,  he 
trembled  insufficiently.  For  presently,  together 
they  planned  the  elimination  of  five  cardinals. 
Then,  through  what  jugglery  is  less  uncertain 
than  clear,  the  wine  intended  for  the  prelates, 
and  which  had  been  studiously  blended  with 
cantarella — the  household  drug — father  and  son 
drank  instead.  Alexander  tumbled  over.  He 
was  dead.  But  Cesare,  who  knew  what  he  was 
about,  had  himself  placed  in  the  carcass  of  a 
bull,  from  which,  either  by  virtue  of  an  old 
superstition,  or  else  because  of  antitoxic  proper- 
ties which  the  carcasses  of  bulls  do  not  possess 
to-day,  he  emerged  subtle  as  a  serpent  that  has 
discarded  its  skin. 

Among  poisoners  anterior  and  subsequent 
Cesare  Borgia  is  princeps.  The  champion  of  the 
lot,  he  was  a  pestilence  in  flesh  and  blood. 


154  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

Beside  him  those  whom  it  remains  to  consider 
may  seem  rather  trite.  This  we  regret.  If 
only  for  the  purposes  known  as  literary,  we 
should  like  to  present  a  crescendo  of  crime. 
Yet  in  the  career  of  Madame  de  Brinvilliers 
we  find  some  consolation.  Though  less  spacious 
than  his,  it  is  almost  as  fine. 

The  Marchioness  of  Brinvilliers,  nee  —  not 
Retrousse,  as  someone  somewhere  amusingly 
noted,  but — D'Aubray,  was  the  daughter  of  a 
Frenchman  of  note.  According  to  an  account 
which  she  was  conscientious  enough  to  provide, 
her  childhood  was  remarkable  only  for  its 
perversity,  and  her  conduct,  while  yet  a  girl, 
left  more  to  be  desired  than  even  she  found  it 
convenient  to  express.  By  way  of  offset,  she 
charmed  on  sight.  Extremely  pretty,  fetch- 
ingly  slight,  she  had  the  face  of  an  angel,  the 
smile  of  a  seraph,  the  attitude  of  a  saint,  and  a 
voice  which  was  silken  in  its  sweetness.  Fancy 
a  demon  masquerading  as  Psyche  and  her 
portrait  is  done.  At  the  age  of  twenty  she 
became  the  wife  of  De  Brinvilliers,  a  young 
nobleman  of  wealth.  The  wealth  came  to  him 
through  his  mother  from  Gobelin,  founder  of 
the  tapestry  looms.  In  the  halls  to  which  he 
took  his  bride  the  number  of  these  tapestries 


FASHIONS  IN  POISONS  155 

which  must  have  been  needed  surpasses  belief. 
In  any  event,  a  few  of  them  are  required  to 
drape  this  story.  For  the  marchioness  promptly 
interested  herself  elsewhere,  and  the  marquis 
followed  suit.  The  immediate  object  of  this 
lady's  fancy  was  a  lieutenant  named  Sainte- 
Croix.  Though  her  husband  did  not  mind,  her 
father  did.  He  had  Sainte-Croix  thrown  into  the 
Bastile,  from  which  ultimately  the  lieutenant 
issued.  But  meanwhile  two  things  had  occurred. 
The  marchioness  had  accumulated  an  intense 
hatred  of  her  father,  and  the  officer  had  acquired 
a  thorough  familiarity  with  arsenic.  When 
finally  he  was  released,  the  dance  began. 

In  the  guise  of  a  sister  of  charity,  the 
marchioness  proceeded  to  promenade  through 
hospital  wards.  To  the  ill  and  ailing  she 
brought  words  of  comfort  and  delicate  food. 
But  those  to  whom  she  ministered  died,  in  great 
agony  at  that.  The  marchioness,  however,  was 
merely  experimenting  with  poison  which  she 
had  got  from  Sainte-Croix.  When  she  was  as- 
sured that  its  effects  were  not  suspected,  the 
experiments  were  complete.  At  this  juncture 
her  father  invited  her  to  visit  him.  As  a  result 
she  ministered,  too,  to  him.  For  eight  months 
she  caressed  him  with  one  hand  and  dosed  him 


156  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

with  the  other.  After  poisoning  him  twenty-eight 
times  vainly,  she  doubled  the  dose,  and  he  died. 

That  death  slaked  her  hate.  It  enriched  her 
also.  But  she  had  brothers  and  sisters  whom, 
unfortunately  for  them,  it  enriched  besides. 
During  all  this  time  the  marchioness  and  her 
husband  were  leading  the  life  which  befits  people 
of  rank.  Such  a  life  requires  money.  To  obtain 
more  she  poisoned  her  two  brothers,  and  planned 
to  eliminate  her  sisters  as  well.  Meanwhile,  to 
keep  her  hand  in,  she  distributed  arsenic  right 
and  left.  She  fed  it  to  her  servants  because 
they  were  awkward;  to  her  daughter  because 
she  was  stupid ;  to  her  husband  because  he  was 
in  the  way.  The  marquis  was  highly  accom- 
modating, but  he  continued  to  be,  and  that 
prevented  her  from  marrying  Sainte-Croix.  But 
Sainte-Croix,  who  had  no  desire  whatever  of 
becoming  the  mate  of  this  reptile,  fed  De 
Brinvilliers  with  antidotes,  and  the  poor  chap, 
poisoned  one  day,  was  counterpoisoned  the  next. 
How  he  enjoyed  what  was  going  on  within  him 
is  a  detail,  the  point  is  that  enterprises  so  amus- 
ing ended  as  all  things  must.  In  the  thick  of 
them  all  it  occurred  to  Sainte-Croix  to  die,  and 
in  dying  to  leave  behind  various  documents 
and  confessions  so  compromising  that  the 


FASHIONS  IN  POISONS  157 

marchioness  was  arrested,  tried,  convicted,  be- 
headed, her  body  burned,  and  the  ashes  dispersed. 

It  is  said  that  her  end  was  highly  edifying. 
We  have  not  a  doubt  of  it.  But  so,  too,  was  the 
fashion  which  she  set.  Paris,  and  more  par- 
ticularly Versailles,  became  powdered  with 
poison.  Even  the  king  got  a  pinch  or  two. 
That  he  merited  it  is  clear.  The  fourteenth 
Louis  of  France  was  not  a  good  man,  he  was 
not  even  a  good-looking  man,  but  as  kings  go, 
he  was  very  imposing,  quite  august,  and  not  un- 
reasonably royal. 

Among  his  caprices  was  Louise  de  la  Valliere, 
a  human  flower  that  exhaled  everything  which 
is  sweet — and  sad.  The  charm  of  her  was  too 
delicate  to  last,  too  delicate  at  least  for  the 
peppered  palate  of  the  monarch,  too  delicate  in 
any  event  to  withstand  the  splendour  of  the 
sunburst  projected  by  the  Montespan.  In  the 
glare  of  it  the  girl  withered.  Her  rival  then 
became  Queen  of  the  Court  of  France.  Royally 
beautiful,  regally  robed,  sovereign  in  manner, 
and  sumptuous  in  magnificence,  Madame  de 
Montespan,  in  lieu  of  charming,  coerced.  To 
use  a  localism  of  the  land,  she  made  the  rain 
and  the  fine  weather.  She  did  more,  she 
made  her  children  "princes  of  the  blood." 


158  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

A  lady  so  resourceful  does  not  abdicate  readily. 
At  the  first  suspicion  of  a  possible  successor  she 
bethought  herself  of  the  powders  which  Sainte- 
Croix  had  dispensed.  The  effort  to  obtain  them 
led  her  into  strange  company  and  stranger  halls 
— into  cellars  where  life  was  an  article  of  com- 
merce, into  dens  where  hags  compounded 
philtres,  into  chapels  where  the  Black  Mass  was 
held,  into  orgies  sacrilegious,  necromantic,  and 
obscene.  From  one  such  excursion  she  returned 
with  a  mixture  of  bat's  blood  and  honey,  a 
remedy  which  was  regarded  as  highly  efficacious 
for  the  restoration  of  alienated  affection. 

In  a  recent  work  concerning  the  lady,  M. 
Funck-Brentano  says  that  this  brew  made  the 
king  deadly  ill.  The  point  to  note  is  that  when 
he  recovered  the  new  star  waned;  only,  how- 
ever, to  be  succeeded  by  another.  The  latter, 
Angelique  de  Fontanges,  a  very  pretty  maid  of 
honour,  so  entranced  the  volatile  heart  of  Louis 
that  the  prestige  of  the  favourite  was  menaced 
as  never  before.  In  her  rage  she  determined  to 
kill  them  both,  and  at  once  she  was  back  in  those 
cellars,  haunting  those  dens,  consulting  with 
artists  in  death,  making  her  plans,  and  ex- 
pending in  the  preliminaries  nearly  a  million 
of  money. 


FASHIONS  IN  POISONS  159 

From  these  attentions  Louis,  of  course, 
escaped,  but  Angelique  died.  Then  the  details 
of  the  plot,  obtained  by  the  secret  service,  were, 
together  with  the  confessions  of  the  various 
artists  and  assistants,  submitted  to  the  king. 
What  happened  to  the  accomplices  is  unimport- 
ant. Some  of  them  were  promptly  broken  on 
the  wheel ;  others  lived  for  years — one  of  them 
for  forty — chained  by  the  foot  in  subterranean 
cells.  With  Madame  de  Montespan,  mother 
of  children  of  the  house  of  France,  nothing  very 
serious  could  be  done.  She  was  thanked  for  her 
good  offices  and  invited  to  retire  into  a  convent, 
where  ultimately  she  died,  quite  like  a  saint. 

Meanwhile  the  taste  for  poisons  increased. 
There  was  barely  a  woman  of  rank  who  was  not 
suspected  of  trying  to  get  her  husband  out  of 
the  way.  Many  grandes  dames  were  tried  ;  some 
were  convicted ;  others,  including  the  Duchesse 
de  Bouillon,  were  requested  to  amuse  themselves 
elsewhere.  But  while  the  taste  increased  the 
mode  improved.  Powders  ceased  to  be  fashion- 
able. It  was  no  longer  considered  elegant  to 
put  arsenic  in  food.  A  drinking-cup  was  devised 
which  turned  wine  into  venom.  Modern  science 
has  denied  that  such  a  cup  could  be.  Another 
invention  was  a  looking-glass.  Its  properties 


160  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

were  such  that  anybody  who  looked  in  one  fell 
dead.  Modern  science  has  denied  the  possibility 
of  that  magic.  Modern  science  is  very  sceptical. 
It  has  routed  many  a  beautiful  legend.  By  way 
of  compensation,  it  has  produced  toxics  which 
would  have  thrown  the  dilettanti  of  the 
Renaissance  into  stupors  of  admiration. 

Consider,  for  instance,  the  micro-organisms 
which  cause  disease.  Speaking  relatively,  it  is 
but  the  day  before  yesterday  that  science  made 
their  acquaintance.  We  all  know  now  that  the 
cause  of  this  complaint  and  that  is  an  insidious 
yet  infinitesimal  germ  which,  removed  from  the 
patient,  can  lead  a  separate  and  potentially 
virulent  existence  until,  introduced  into  other 
circles,  it  infects  anew.  Given  any  of  these 
terrific  little  things  and  a  modern  Medici  could 
distribute  viaticums  as  indetectably  as  Fate. 

Within  the  bit  of  lignum  vitse  which  served 
Caracalla  for  heart  there  were  concentrated  the 
cruelty  and  the  guile  of  a  wilderness  of  tiger-cats. 
When  the  pretorians  eliminated  him  they  found 
in  his  luggage  poisons  supersufficient  for  the 
destruction  of  all  the  legions  that  he  led.  What 
fresh  turpitudes  he  was  devising  history  has 
omitted  to  relate.  But  this  is  clear :  could  he 
have  foreseen  the  possibilities  in  microbes  which 


FASHIONS  IN  POISONS  161 

we  have  suggested,  mountains  of  poisons  would 
have  seemed  to  him  paltry. 

Apart  from  these  possibilities,  any  physician 
to-day  who  happened  to  be  artistically  inclined 
could  adapt  penalties  to  persons.  In  a  lady,  for 
instance,  who  had  become  superfluous,  he  could 
induce  consumption.  Consumption  is  a  very 
ladylike  disease.  No  gentlewoman,  however 
sensitive,  would  be  ashamed  to  die  of  it.  Then 
there  is  gout.  Gout  is  a  highly  aristocratic 
complaint.  Any  self-respecting  snob  in  whom 
it  was  induced  would  succumb  to  it  with 
thanksgiving. 

Of  possibilities  and  powers  such  as  these  the 
past  knew  nothing.  By  way  of  compensation  it 
possessed  poisons  that  were  perfumes.  Their 
odour  perverted  the  imagination  and  stained 
the  thoughts.  They  turned  conceptions  of  right 
into  wrong  and  made  the  unholy  adorable.  They 
drove  matrons  mad  and  senators  madder. 

Long  since,  these  perfumes  have  evaporated. 
In  their  stead  are  corrosives  just  as  coercive. 
Catalogued  as  libel  and  slander,  they  are  quite 
as  convenient  as  the  cantarella  of  the  Borgias 
and  even  more  maleficent  than  microbes.  These 
are  the  poisons  that  are  modish  to-day.  Such 
is  modern  progress. 
L 


XIII 
CLARET  AND   CREAM 

THE  British  Academy  of  Letters  has,  we  learn, 
become  a  fact.  We  learn,  also,  that  its  object 
is  uncertain.  To  others,  perhaps,  yet  not  to 
us.  In  the  cannibal  South  Seas  old  people  are 
knocked  on  the  head.  That  is  quite  as  it  should 
be.  Old  people  are  tenacious  of  their  ideas.  In 
killing  them  off  progress  is  facilitated.  England 
is  eminently  conservative.  Instead  of  filling 
cemeteries  with  the  decrepit  she  furnishes  an 
academy  for  them.  So  are  the  just  rewarded; 
so,  too,  is  conservatism  maintained. 

In  the  circumstances  there  is  no  good  and 
valid  reason  why  we  should  not  have  an 
academy  in  the  States  —  but  on  different  lines ; 
for  that  matter,  on  lines  so  ample  that  the 
clothes-line  would  not  be  omitted  from  them. 

What  we  require  are  not  the  arriere-pensees 
of  age  but  the  frank  enthusiasms  of  beauty. 

It   is    only   from    the    young    that    one    really 

162 


CLARET  AND  CREAM  163 

learns,  and  one  learns  best  from  those  who  are 
gracious.  Highways  are  trodden  and  sterile. 
It  is  in  the  pampas,  the  savannahs,  the  forest 
primeval,  in  lands  that  are  virgin  and  minds 
fresh  as  they,  that  Nature  gives  utterance  to 
her  thoughts. 

We  cannot  listen  to  her  too  often.  She  has 
always  something  new  to  say,  or,  if  not  new, 
then  something  so  old  that  it  seems  quite 
novel.  But  it  is  only  to  the  young  that  she 
says  it.  In  default  of  her,  let  us  listen  to 
them,  and,  with  that  object,  form  an  academy 
of  those  who  have  done  nothing. 

There  are  plenty  of  them.  From  the  tons 
of  manuscript  —  unsolicited  and  with  stamps 
enclosed — which  we  see  daily  dumped  on  edi- 
torial desks,  we  think  it  safe  to  assume  that 
out  of  the  wilderness  light  shall  come.  In 
any  event,  it  is  clear  that  there  are  enough 
amateurs  in  our  midst  to  stock  academies  by 
the  cityful. 

They  have,  indeed,  done  nothing  yet.  But 
therein  is  their  charm.  An  academy  composed 
of  young  people  who  have  done  nothing  yet 
would  be  more  alluring  than  one  made  up  of 
fossils  who  are  unable  to  do  anything  more. 

Such    an    academy  would    be    ideal   and    its 


164  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

establishment  easy.  Any  one  of  the  multi- 
tudinous millionairesses  whom  we  behold  float- 
ing about  could  usher  it  into  being  with  but  the 
wave  of  a  cheque.  Then,  quite  like  Sappho  at 
Mitylene,  she  could  beckon  about  her  clusters 
of  fair  young  women,  who,  from  kissable  lips 
would  instruct  the  world  in  the  arts  of  love 
and  life. 

What  more  could  the  heart  desire?  Those 
kissable  lips  would  tell  us  what  we  have  long 
since  learned  to  forget— that  we  all  make  a 
great  fuss  over  things  which  are  not  worth 
bothering  about;  that  constancy,  for  instance, 
which  we  always  exact  and  never  accord,  is 
the  result  of  nothing  more  than  an  absence 
of  imagination.  That  would  be  very  good  for 
the  first  lesson ;  for  there  is  nothing  so  tire- 
some as  a  woman  without  imagination,  ex- 
cept a  woman  who  has  too  much. 

Those  kissable  lips,  in  dilating  on  the  subject, 
would  cite  apposite  examples,  among  others, 
a  recent  case  perhaps,  in  which  a  pistol  shot, 
fired  in  the  dead  of  night,  reverberated  through 
the  small  talk  of  the  land.  The  echoes,  sub- 
siding, dwindled,  it  is  true,  into  the  nothing 
from  which  they  had  sprung.  But,  assuming 
that  a  shot  there  had  been,  what  an  endearing 


CLARET  AND  CREAM  165 

homily  could  be  drawn  on  the  tastefulness  and 
tactf ulness  of  those  who,  for  bagatelles  such  as 
this,  do  their  worst  to  raise  the  roof.  "  H  fait 
beau  aujourd'hui"  a  French  caricaturist  made 
one  English  lord  say  to  another,  "  allons  tuer 
quelque  chose"  There  are  people  who  are  just 
as  eager  the  moment  the  domestic  sky  is 
obscured. 

A  fine  rebuke  they  would  get  from  fair 
women,  and  fine  applause,  too,  would  be  be- 
stowed on  the  gentleman  who,  discovered 
behind  the  curtains  of  a  boudoir,  and  being 
noisily  asked  by  the  husband  what  he  was 
doing  there,  answered,  with  an  assurance  en- 
tirely Apollonian :  "  I  am  taking  a  walk.*' 

In  this  way  we  should  acquire  instruction, 
not  merely  in  manners,  but  in  repartee.  As 
a  people  we  need  it.  As  a  people  we  are,  of 
course,  delightful;  but  we  are  neither  witty 
nor  well  bred.  By  way  of  compensation  we 
are  highly  moral,  or  think  ourselves  so,  which 
amounts  to  quite  the  same  thing.  Our  novels 
are  padded  with  purity  and  scenery  and  our 
newspapers  with  hypocrisy  and  cant.  Were 
proof  of  our  morality  required,  there  it  is. 
But  through  some  defect  of  the  climate — un- 
less it  be  of  the  schools— we  lack  the  higher 


166  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

morality  which  was  inculcated  by  Epicurus, 
by  Epictetus,  by  one  of  the  popes,  Boniface 
VIII.,  and  which  consists  in  accepting  with 
gaiety  and  indulgence  such  accidents  as  we 
cannot  avoid.  But  not  a  bit  of  it.  We 
make  the  mistake  of  taking  ourselves  seriously 
when  there  is  nothing  earthly  worth  taking 
seriously  at  all — except,  indeed,  the  quality  of 
the  champagne  which  we  drink  and  the  giving 
and  the  acceptance  of  invitations  to  dine. 

Apropos  whereto  those  fair  women  would 
have  a  word  or  two  for  the  metropolitan 
hostess.  They  would  tell  her  that,  of  all 
forms  of  iniquity,  dining  is  the  most  bar- 
barous. In  primitive  days  people  fed  in 
common  through  fear  of  being  attacked.  As 
often  as  not  the  fear  was  justified.  Nowadays 
people  feed  in  common  through  the  more 
dreadful  fear  of  being  bored,  and  succeed 
very  perfectly  in  becoming  so.  "  Venez  mes- 
sieurs" said  a  numbered  Louis  of  France, 
"  allons  nous  ennuyer  ensemble."  That  is  the 
way  modern  invitations  read.  Yet,  since  such 
things  must  be,  those  who  love  righteousness 
without  abhorring  mammon  should  throw  out 
the  sweets.  In  this  sanitary  age  flattery  is 
the  only  variety  that  can  be  hygienically 


CLARET  AND  CREAM  167 

assimilated.  Of  that  the  least  among  us  can 
never  have  enough. 

In  discussing  our  modes,  caprices,  passions, 
and  disillusions  —  which  is  about  all  we  can 
call  our  very  own,  except,  indeed,  our  further 
charm — the  fact,  as  Goethe  noted,  that  we  are 
all  of  us  capable  of  crime — though  it  be  but 
that  of  bad  taste,  which  is  assuredly  the  worst 
of  all — in  discussing  these  things  those  fair 
women  would  pass  from  grave  to  gay  and 
display  for  us  the  bewilderments  and  witch- 
eries of  life  as  it  is. 

They  would  show  us  that  it  is  a  continuous 
catastrophe.  They  would  show  us  that,  whether 
it  be  that  of  an  individual  or  of  a  nation,  life 
is  but  a  diffusion  of  stupidity  and  vulgarity. 
The  showing  would  not  be  cheerful,  but  it 
would  have  the  merit  of  being  exact. 

They  would  not  stop  there  either.  From  the 
premises  advanced  it  would  be  logical  and 
agreeable  to  assume  that  life  on  earth  is  a 
sort  of  leprosy,  the  result,  perhaps,  of  a  mor- 
bid secretion  from  which  healthy  planets  are 
immune. 

And,  after  all,  why  not?  Sir  Robert  Ball, 
not  long  since,  informed  us  that,  within  the 
relatively  narrow  sphere  to  which  observation 


168  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

is  confined,  there  are  not  less  than  three 
hundred  million  worlds.  Beyond  the  utter- 
most of  these  worlds  there  are  other  planets, 
other  systems,  other  suns.  Wherever  imagina- 
tion, in  its  weariness,  would  set  a  limit,  there 
is  space  begun. 

In  view  of  which,  and  of  more,  too,  it  becomes 
humorous  to  suppose  that  the  vulgarity  and 
stupidity  on  exhibition  here  are  indefinitely 
repeated  throughout  space.  On  the  moon  life 
there  may  be.  The  moon  was  once  part  of 
the  earth.  It  may,  in  consequence,  have  been 
infected  with  the  original  complaint.  It  is 
possible,  also,  that,  through  atmospheric  and 
aqueous  affinities,  Mars  has  been  exposed  to 
the  same  disease.  From  Venus  and  Mercury 
science  has  discovered  that  such  affinities  have 
been  withheld.  But  of  the  other  worlds  and 
systems  we  know  so  little  that  it  is  idle  to 
attempt  to  know  less. 

Yet,  though  one  and  all  of  these  worlds  move 
in  a  mystery  which  is  due  to  our  ignorance, 
we  may  pierce  it  with  the  hope  that  they  have 
been  preserved  from  the  bewilderments  and 
witcheries  of  which  life  on  this  planet  is  the 
cause. 

In  displaying  these  things  the  cluster  of  fair 


CLARET  AND  CREAM  169 

young  women  would  indicate  the  forethought 
of  Providence,  which  has  provided  us  with  ample 
compensations.  For  there  are  compensations. 
There  are  two  of  them — and  two  is  a  good 
many. 

The  first  is  evil.  We  do  not  appreciate  evil 
at  its  worth.  It  is  the  handicraft  of  Satan. 
We  do  not  appreciate  him  as  we  should.  He 
is  a  great  artificer.  He  is  more;  he  is  a  great 
artist.  It  was  he  who  created  this  compensa- 
tion, which  is  a  jewel,  a  luxury,  and  a  necessity 
in  one.  And  naturally.  Evil  is  the  counterpart 
of  excellence.  Both  have  their  roots  in  nature. 
One  could  not  be  destroyed  without  the  other. 
For  every  shape  of  evil  there  is  a  corresponding 
form  of  good.  Virtue  would  be  meaningless 
were  it  not  for  vice.  Beauty  would  have  no 
charm  were  it  not  for  ugliness.  Genius  would 
have  no  message  were  it  not  for  bores. 

Evil  is,  therefore,  a  jewel,  and  highly  salutary 
at  that.  Were  it  eliminated  from  the  scheme 
of  things  life  would  have  no  savour  and  joy  no 
delight.  Existence  would  provide  the  monotony 
of  silence.  Happiness  and  unhappiness  would 
be  synonymous  states. 

The  other  jewel  which  Providence  has  set  in 
our  tiara  is  superstition.  What  would  we  do 


170  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

without  that?  A  superstition  is  a  hope.  Be- 
sides, is  it  not  nicer  to  be  wrong  in  a  given 
belief  than  not  to  have  it  at  all?  Of  course  it 
is.  We  believe  what  we  wish,  never  what  we 
should. 

It  is  fortunate  that  we  can.  Were  it  other- 
wise, the  vitriol  which  science  has  thrown  at 
faith  would  have  set  society  mad.  But  not  a 
bit  of  it.  Society  turned  its  back.  The  attitude 
is  commendable,  for  it  is  on  superstition  that 
we  all  subsist — superstition  by  day,  dreams  at 
night. 

Superstition  covers  a  multitude  of  stupidities. 
But  it  is  ductile  and  plastic.  It  lends  itself  to 
combinations  which  are  as  marvellous  as  they 
are  enchanting.  We  are  indebted  to  it  for  the 
masterpieces  of  art,  for  the  splendour  of  cathe- 
drals, for  the  seductions  of  song,  for  real  litera- 
ture and  good  verse.  We  owe  to  it  everything, 
even  to  the  amenities  of  life.  Superstition  is 
the  essential  ingredient  of  everything  that  is 
charming.  It  is  the  basis  of  ethics  and  the 
foundation  of  beauty.  It  has  decorated  life  and 
robbed  death  of  its  grotesqueness.  It  is,  there- 
fore, in  accordance  with  the  order  of  things  and 
the  necessities  of  man. 

Truth,  on  the  other  hand,  is  vicious.    We  may 


CLARET  AND  CREAM  171 

sigh  for  it,  but  it  is  best  that  we  should  sigh 
in  vain.  Truth  is  hard.  It  is  rigid.  It  is  not 
ductile  nor  is  it  plastic.  It  does  not  yield.  It 
is  vicious,  and,  being  vicious,  it  bites.  Get  in 
its  way,  and,  unless  you  have  had  the  fore- 
thought to  antisepticise  yourself  with  indiffer- 
ence, it  will  cause  a  hydrophobia  for  which 
the  only  Pasteur  Institute  is  time. 

Superstition  is  just  the  reverse.  It  is  amiable 
and  consolatory.  It  is,  indeed,  a  jewel.  We 
should  hold  fast  to  it.  We  should  hold  fast  to 
what  we  may  and  not  try  to  prove  anything. 

From  maxims  of  this  fastidious  morality 
deductions  follow.  It  will  be  seen  that  life 
is  not  all  that  fancy  might  paint  it.  It  will 
be  suspected  that  its  compensations  are  not 
as  compensatory  as  they  look.  From  these 
premises  it  will  be  argued  that  there  must  be 
an  error  somewhere,  a  big  mistake,  a  stitch 
dropped  from  the  original  scheme  of  things,  a 
blunder,  extending  back,  perhaps,  to  the  par- 
turitions of  the  primal  protoplasm. 

Such  argument  is  entirely  valid.  We  esteem 
ourselves  at  a  value  which  we  do  not  possess ; 
for  no  reason  other  than  innate  conceit  we 
fancy  ourselves  advanced.  That  fancy  is  so 
comforting  that  with  it  we  have  developed  an 


172  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

idolatry  of  the  most  amusing  kind.  We  have 
developed  the  worship  of  self.  The  unction  of 
that  worship  is  so  thick  that  through  it  we  fail 
to  see  how  stupid  we  look.  We  fail  to  see  that 
the  most  gracious  and  indulgent  sentiment  which 
we  can  have  for  ourselves  is  not  esteem  but 
contempt.  We  have  not  advanced;  we  have 
deviated.  It  is  not  from  apes  that  we  should 
have  descended,  though  better,  perhaps,  apes 
than  reptiles;  yet,  had  evolution  had  us  really 
in  its  charge,  instead  of  being  superior  animals 
we  should  be  human  butterflies,  subsisting  on 
dew  and  desire,  with  youth,  winged  and  beauti- 
ful, for  the  crown  and  conclusion  of  life. 

A  life  such  as  that,  untroubled  by  dentists, 
unburdened  by  tailors,  untrammelled  by  bills, 
unencumbered  by  bores,  a  life  free,  volatile,  and 
quasi-divine,  a  life  passed  among  flowers  and 
suave  perfumes,  a  life  of  sheer  poetry  which, 
but  for  some  archaic  error,  might  have  been 
ours — a  life  such  as  that,  however  fantastic, 
would,  to  say  the  least,  be  more  agreeable  than 
one  such  as  this,  in  which  we  do  little  of  more 
importance  than  assist  with  the  passivity  which 
good  breeding  requires  at  the  loss  of  our 
illusions,  our  umbrellas,  and  our  hair. 

Et  voila,  et  cetera,  and  so  forth. 


CLARET  AND  CREAM  173 

It  is  cups  of  claret  and  cream  of  this  order 
that,  in  the  ideal  academy  which  we  advocate, 
clusters  of  fair  women  would  convey,  and,  in 
conveying,  uplift. 

For  women,  particularly  when  pretty,  are  the 
natural  instructors  of  man.  Their  intuitions  are 
more  valuable  than  the  certainties  of  mathe- 
matics, their  insight  surer  than  the  demonstra- 
tions which  logic  provides.  They  are  abundantly 
lacking  in  sense,  it  is  true.  But  when  has  reason 
governed  the  world  ?  It  is  by  the  heart-strings 
alone  that  men  can  be  pulled,  and  it  is  only 
women  that  can  do  it.  In  addition,  they  have 
the  immense  advantage  of  being  all  alike,  in 
that  they  are,  every  one  of  them,  different. 
And  a  cluster  of  them  delivering  the  messages 
of  nature,  to  whom,  through  that  weakness 
which  is  their  strength,  they  are  nearer  than 
man,  would  constitute  not  merely  an  ideal 
academy,  but  give  the  world  fresh  conceptions 
of  beauty  and  therewith  a  taste,  as  yet  unculti- 
vated, for  claret  and  cream. 


XIV 
HUMAN   HYENAS 

THE  lives  of  good  men  are  handsomely  bound 
and  never  read — by  ourselves  at  least — though 
no  doubt  there  are  people  to  whom  they  con- 
stitute a  source  of  severe  satisfaction.  Con- 
versely the  lives  of  bad  men  have  yet  to  appear. 
When  they  do,  the  fascination  of  their  charm  will 
be  that  which  attaches  to  the  abnormal.  For 
though  hyenas  alarm  they  also  attract.  In  his- 
tory as  in  romance  it  is  the  shudder  that  tells. 
In  menageries  and  zoos  it  is  the  wildest  beast 
that  obtains  the  best  attention. 

Quite  naturally  too.  There  are  so  few  beasts 
now  that  are  not  entirely  tame.  By  the  same 
token  shudders  were  never  more  scarce.  Con- 
temporaneous crime  is  very  commonplace.  But 
occasionally,  by  accident,  something  out  of  the 
ordinary  will  occur,  and  then  even  the  virtuous 
take  to  reading  about  it.  Particularly  if  there 
be  a  woman  in  the  case.  Yet  it  is  only,  in 
addition  to  petticoats,  when  murder  and  mystery 

174 


HUMAN  HYENAS  175 

are  agreeably  fused  that  you  feel  you  are  getting 
your  money's  worth. 

That,  too,  is  natural.  There  is  nothing  so  com- 
forting as  a  good  old-fashioned  murder.  There 
is  nothing  so  poetic  either.  For  behind  it  is  an 
effort  to  outwit  destiny,  the  attempt  to  change 
the  course  of  events,  and  to  change  them  after 
the  fashion  of  fate,  indetectably. 

The  idea  of  being  able  to  do  all  that  is  highly 
poetic.  But  it  is  also  primitive.  Primitive  man 
had  three  or  four  ideas.  Civilised  man  has  not 
many  more.  With  this  difference,  however. 
Primitive  man,  disturbed  in  his  ideas,  vanished. 
In  his  place  there  sprang  a  beast.  That  beast 
civilised  man  has  quelled.  But  not  exterminated. 
The  brute  is  among  us  still.  Yet  so  tame  that 
the  majority  of  us  forget  that  he  is  about.  It 
takes  a  murder  to  remind  us  of  him. 

Murder  is  neozoic.  It  shows  a  relapse  of 
nature.  The  murderer  may  have  in  his  appear- 
ance nothing  resembling  the  cave-dweller,  yet 
behind  appearances — always  illusory — is  the  trog- 
lodyte. Through  causes  generally  reducible  to 
crises  of  the  emotions  the  creature's  few  ideas 
become  disturbed.  Then  abruptly  the  being 
apparently  civilised  evaporates.  He  has  gone. 
In  his  place  is  the  hyena.  There  is  a  shriek. 


176  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

A  silence.  The  next  morning  the  papers  are 
full  of  it. 

That  is  the  ordinary  case.  There  are  others. 
There  are  crimes  in  which  there  is  no  atavism. 
There  are  murders  incidental  to  the  abstract 
sciences;  felonies  of  the  professional  order. 
These  are  accidents.  According  to  statistics — 
and  what  should  we  do  without  them? — in 
the  Benighted  States  there  occurred  last  year 
nearly  nine  thousand  cases  appertaining  to 
this  and  to  the  former  variety.  That  is  a 
nice  showing.  In  addition,  there  are  murders 
effected  by  men  who  are  not  professional  or 
primitive,  but  wise.  Concerning  these  we 
have  no  data.  They  leave  none.  They  leave 
nothing  except  now  and  again  a  death 
which  is  attributed  to  natural  causes.  These 
people  are  not  hyenas.  They  are  men  of  ability. 
They  are  very  interesting.  There  is  another 
class  more  interesting  still.  They  form  the 
coterie  of  criminals  who  are  above  the  law. 
We  will  get  to  them  in  a  minute. 

Meanwhile,  in  ordinary  cases,  just  prior  to  the 
shriek,  to  the  silence,  and  to  the  headlines  in 
the  papers,  there  occur,  almost  invariably,  certain 
phenomena  which  are  perhaps  worth  noting. 

First  is    a    condition    of   irritability    induced 


HUMAN  HYENAS  177 

by  a  disturbance  of  ideas.  From  this  condition 
paralysis  of  memory  results.  The  patient  forgets 
the  past  and  its  lessons,  the  present  and  its 
penalties.  In  his  mind  there  is  a  complete  ob- 
literation of  all  knowledge,  except  the  fact  that 
some  particular  person  is  offensively  occupied 
in  continuing  to  be.  That  fact,  increasing  the 
irritation,  induces  a  state  quasi-somnambulistic. 
Of  all  the  cells  of  the  brain  there  is  but  one  that 
is  awake.  Over  the  others  sleep  has  slipped. 
But  in  that  cell  is  an  incitement  inciting  the 
patient  to  kill. 

Then  it  is  that  there  ensues  the  shriek  and 
the  succeeding  silence.  But  before  the  reporters 
get  to  work  other  phenomena  have  occurred. 
Paralysis  subsides.  Somnambulism  ceases.  There 
is  an  immediate  awakening  of  the  entire  brain. 
The  past  with  its  lessons  returns.  On  its  heels 
the  present  and  its  penalties  troop.  In  their 
sudden  rush  the  troglodyte  dematerialises. 
Civilised  man  reappears.  The  patient  sees  what 
he  has  done,  and,  seeing,  it  seems  to  him  that 
another  must  have  done  it. 

He  is  right.     The  mind  has  many  a  cellar.     In 
them  strange  tenants  prowl.     Beneath  the  brain 
are  the   caves  of    subconsciousness.    There,  in- 
fluences  that   we    know   nothing    of,    impulses 
M 


178  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

which  the  majority  of  us  never  feel,  watch  and 
wait.  Our  individuality  is  dual.  Half  our  being 
is  unaware  what  the  other  half  is  about.  In 
normal  condition  man  is  a  bundle  of  ideas  and 
sensations  arranged  in  order  and  sequence.  But 
in  certain  crises  of  the  emotions  the  orderly  ar- 
rangement gets  twisted,  ideas  and  sensations 
become  displaced,  and  from  the  individual, 
ordinarily  normal,  emerges  the  human  hyena. 

Usually  the  beast  is  subordinated,  controlled, 
but  never  banished.  It  is  there  crouching  in  the 
caves  of  the  soul.  A  distinguishing  trait  of  the 
gentleman  is  that  he  never  betrays  its  presence. 
A  thinker  is  too  philosophic.  Hence  the  value  of 
blue  blood.  Hence,  also,  the  beauty  of  sound 
logic.  But  when  in  pathological  conditions, 
induced  by  causes  as  yet  obscure,  the  other, 
the  simian,  the  secreted  self,  breaks  loose,  then 
there  is  the  devil  to  pay  and  something  to 
read  about  in  the  papers. 

That,  perhaps,  is  the  psychology  of  every 
night  murder.  Among  savans  there  is  nothing 
of  this.  A  trick  merely  with  clogged  dice. 
Among  professionals  there  is  some  of  the  first 
and  much  of  the  latter.  In  the  criminals  who 
are  above  the  law  both  elements  are  present 
with  power  added. 


HUMAN  HYENAS  179 

Power  consists  in  having  a  million  bayonets 
behind  you.  Its  diffusion  is  not  general.  But 
there  are  people  who  possess  it.  For  one,  the 
German  Kaiser.  Not  long  since  somebody  or 
other  diagnosed  in  him  the  habitual  criminal. 
We  doubt  that  he  is  that.  But  we  suspect  that, 
were  it  not  for  the  press,  he  would  show  more 
of  primitive  man  than  he  has  thus  far  thought 
judicious. 

Tsi  An,  the  Empress  Regent  of  China,  has  been 
less  circumspect.  As  you  may  remember,  a  few 
summers  ago,  this  lady  succeeded  in  throwing 
us  all  into  fits.  Subsequently  we  derived  much 
pleasure  from  an  article  by  Lombroso,  in  which 
he  catalogued  her  foremost  among  historic 
beasts.  The  naivete  of  that  seemed  to  us  re- 
freshing. 

The  lady  is  not,  perhaps,  one  whom  we  should 
care  to  meet  in  the  dark,  but  there  are  corridors 
in  which  we  have  encountered  a  number  of 
people  beside  whom  she  is  quite  an  engaging 
person.  Take,  for  instance,  Caligula.  There  you 
have  an  artist  in  blood,  a  connoisseur  in  crime, 
a  ruler  to  whom  general  fiendishness  was  both 
a  governmental  necessity  and  a  personal  de- 
light. And  take  Caracalla.  A  thinker  has  said 
that  no  mortal  is  wholly  vile.  Caracalla  was. 


180  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

He  had  not  a  taste,  not  a  vice  that  was  not 
washed  and  rewashed  in  blood.  Beside  a 
savage  such  as  he  and  a  saurian  such  as 
Caligula  the  old  woman  in  China  looks  rather 
cheap. 

There  are  others !  In  particular,  there  is 
Attila.  Where  he  passed,  the  earth  remained  for 
ages  bare.  The  whirlwind  that  he  loosed  swept 
civilisation  like  a  broom.  In  the  echoes  of  his 
passage  you  catch  but  the  crash  of  falling  cities, 
the  cries  of  the  vanquished,  the  death-rattle  of 
nations,  the  surge  and  roar  of  seas  of  blood.  In 
their  reverberations  Attila  looms,  dragging  the 
desert  after  him,  tossing  it  like  a  pall  on  the 
face  of  the  world.  In  the  fury  with  which  he 
pounced  on  antiquity  there  is  the  impersonality 
of  a  cyclone.  By  comparison  with  the  havoc  which 
he  wrought,  the  contortions  of  Caracalla  become 
unimportant  caprices.  Beside  this  human  ava- 
lanche Caligula  dwindles  ridiculously.  "  But  who 
are  you : "  a  startled  prelate  found  the  strength 
to  gasp.  Said  Attila,  "I  am  the  Scourge  of 
God." 

Another  fine  fiend  was  Tamerlane.  In  the 
menagerie  of  history  he  is  thoroughly  red — red 
with  what  Marlowe  called  war's  rich  livery. 
It  was  part  of  him.  When  he  was  born  his 


HUMAN  HYENAS  181 

hands  were  full  of  blood.  Subsequently,  when 
he  did  not  wade  in  it,  it  formed  his  usual  bath. 
In  his  career  is  the  monotony  of  the  infernal 
regions.  It  is  made  up  of  groans.  Yet  then 
he  knew  but  one  thing — how  to  kill.  He  came, 
saw,  slaughtered,  and  departed.  When  he  had 
gone  he  left  nothing — "at  most,"  an  old  writer 
says,  "a  dumb  sound  like  a  drum  beaten  under 
a  blanket."  Beside  that  sound  what  are  the 
tom-toms  of  Tsi  An? 

For  that  matter,  what  are  they  beside  the 
timbrels  of  the  Tsar  Ivan,  who,  though  quite 
demoniac,  fancied  himself  divine.  "I  am  your 
god,"  he  announced  to  some  wretches  for  whom 
he  was  preparing  a  hurried  execution.  "I  am 
your  god,  as  God  is  mine."  Whether  the  an- 
nouncement consoled  them  is  immaterial.  The 
theory  of  it  delighted  him.  At  Novgorod,  for 
no  reason  whatever  other  than  the  exercise  of 
his  divinity,  he  began  a  leisurely  massacre  that 
outlasted  a  month.  Every  noon,  from  five  hun- 
dred to  a  thousand  people  were  driven  before 
him  and  poignantly  despatched.  Occasionally 
he  lent  a  hand,  running  his  subjects  through 
and  through,  killing  them  like  so  many  ver- 
min, laughing  mightily  at  the  stupidity  of  their 
agony,  and,  when  his  wrist  wearied,  ordering 


182  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

them  off  to  tall  gibbets,  to  seething  vats,  or, 
more  expeditiously,  drowning  them  wholesale 
in  the  river.  Sometimes  a  mob  of  people  were 
strung  up  by  the  heels.  Sometimes  they  were 
hacked  to  pieces.  Sometimes  they  were  first 
strung  up  a  bit,  then  hacked  a  little,  and,  finally, 
tossed  into  the  vats.  Sometimes  also  a  pack  of 
hounds  was  unleashed,  and  as  Ivan  eyed  the 
fight  of  men  and  dogs  the  hyena  within  awoke, 
his  own  fangs  glistened,  and  with  a  roar  he 
would  bury  them  in  a  subject's  throat.  Nor 
was  he  without  humour.  An  envoy  of  the 
King  of  Poland  presumed  to  appear  before 
him  with  his  hat  on.  By  way  of  rebuke  he 
had  that  hat  nailed  to  the  envoy's  head. 

The  rebuke  was  not  perhaps  what  we  call 
epigrammatic.  But  at  least  it  was  to  the  point. 
It  made  up  in  irony  what  it  lacked  in  paradox. 
Tamerlane  would  have  enjoyed  it.  So,  too, 
would  Cesare  Borgia. 

There  is  another  hyena.  Ivan  was  human. 
He  had  his  weaknesses.  Among  them  were 
seven  wives.  In  Cesare  Borgia  there  was 
nothing  human.  The  caverns  of  history  hold 
monsters  more  masterful  than  he,  but  none 
more  cold-blooded.  To  every  hyena  there  come 
moments  of  repletion  and  fatigue.  With  these 


HUMAN  HYENAS  183 

moments  come  a  desire  for  rest.  When  the 
beast  is  fed  he  is  at  peace  with  the  world. 
Cesare  Borgia  was  never  fed.  As  we  have  else- 
where noted,  he  was  never  weary.  He  was 
without  nerves,  without  heart,  without  weak- 
nesses of  any  kind.  Beside  him  other  fiends, 
including  the  Empress  Tsi  An,  look  rather 
vulgar. 

The  candle  which  that  woman  holds  to  Philip 
II.  is  not  much  of  a  dip  either.  That  demon 
who  presided  over  the  better  part  of  the  globe, 
over  an  entire  eclipse  of  the  intellect  as  well, 
who  made  it  blasphemous  to  think,  and  who, 
squatting  in  the  Escorial,  dissolved  into  a  mass 
of  mud,  knew  no  pleasure — save  that  of  mo- 
tioning people  out  of  existence  —  and  never 
smiled,  save  at  the  human  fireworks  which 
the  auto-da-fes  flared  for  him  on  holidays. 

In  the  perspectives  of  chronicles  Philip,  Ivan, 
Tamerlane,  and  the  rest  loom  like  ogres  in  a 
fairy  tale.  They  affright,  but  they  detain. 
There  is  nothing  commonplace  about  them. 
They  are  the  antithesis  of  the  humdrum,  homi- 
cidal maniacs,  with  death  for  delirium  and  the 
world  for  cell,  the  real  hyenas,  unmatchable, 
without  lineage,  whose  successors  shall  never 
be.  For  the  present  at  least.  The  times  are 


184  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

too  trite.  There  are  none  like  them  any  more. 
By  comparison  Tsi  An  is  but  a  vicious  child. 
Much  as  we  otherwise  admire  the  lady,  we  can- 
not connive  at  Lombroso's  effort  to  boost  her 
to  where  they  stand. 

Seen  through  contemporaneous  records  Tsi 
An  is  a  bad  woman.  But  women,  however  bad, 
are  never  as  bad  as  bad  men.  They  may  have 
the  desire,  but  they  lack  the  nerve.  Tsi  An 
could  not  face  the  allies. 

The  feminine  in  her  took  fright.  A  male 
hyena  would  have  stood  his  ground,  only  to  lose 
it  perhaps,  and  his  head  as  well.  Yet,  though 
he  fell,  it  would  have  been  in  the  roar  of  cannon, 
in  the  shriek  of  shell,  defiant  and  hyenaesque 
to  the  last.  It  is  of  such  stuff  as  this  that  fiends 
and  heroes  are  made.  They  are  not  afraid.  Tsi 
An  was  not  either.  Except  of  danger.  It  is 
that  exception  which  debars  her  from  mount- 
ing to  the  glorious  menagerie  where  the  other 
beasts  are. 

"What  is  glory?"  a  young  barbarian  asked 
an  old  Roman.  "  To  create  splendour,"  the  latter 
replied,  "or  to  destroy  it."  To-day  destructive 
ability  is  lacking.  Power,  even  when  backed  by 
bayonets,  is  powerless  before  the  press.  There 
you  have  the  great  deterrent.  The  press  is  not 


HUMAN  HYENAS  185 

destructive.  It  stands  for  nothing  that  is.  It 
is  for  this  reason  that  crime,  though  continuous, 
is  commonplace.  In  descending  the  centuries 
it  has  degenerated  into  a  condition  sometimes 
interesting,  occasionally  exciting,  but  sympto- 
matic of  a  disease,  for  which,  in  the  advance 
of  therapeutics,  a  prophylactic  some  day  or 
other  will  be  devised. 

When  that  day  comes  —  when  it  does  —  the 
triteness  that  the  morning  papers  will  display 
makes  us  yawn  in  advance. 


XV 
THE   COURTS  OF  LOVE 

THE  'varsities  are  changing  their  chairs.  It  is 
high  time.  When  we  went  to  school  we  were 
taught  everything  it  was  easiest  to  forget.  Our 
curriculum  comprised  the  largest  possible  num- 
ber of  subjects  of  which  the  least  possible 
use  could  be  made.  No  doubt  they  were  de- 
signed for  our  good.  Yet  we  are  unable  to 
conjecture  what  difference  it  would  have  made 
had  they  been  intended  for  our  harm.  We  are 
unable  to  recall  a  single  one  of  them. 

Now,  however,  things  are  looking  up.  Oxford, 
for  instance,  is  throwing  out  Greek.  In  the 
States  generally,  instead  of  the  mummeries 
of  the  classics  there  are  modern  tongues  and 
history  in  lieu  of  calculus.  That  is  all  very 
well.  But  the  change  is  susceptible  of  im- 
provement. 

Learning  is  not  fashionable.      Society  has  a 

great  contempt  for  it.     If  you  do  not  believe  us 

186 


THE  COURTS  OF  LOVE  187 

go  and  see.  You  will  find  it  stupid  to  be  wise 
all  alone.  For  alone  you  will  be.  The  more  you 
know  the  more  diligently  you  will  be  avoided. 
And  very  naturally.  When  your  Red  Badge  of 
Culture  does  not  put  your  hostess  to  sleep,  it 
makes  her  feel  ignorant.  Neither  proceeding  is 
societyfied. 

No,  indeed.  A  knowledge  of  history,  however 
superficial,  will  not  bring  you  invitations  to 
dinner.  It  is  the  same  with  languages.  You 
may  develop  into  a  polyglot  and  die  a  bounder. 
The  majority  of  us  want  to  see  our  names  in 
the  papers.  The  ambition  is  quite  noble,  and 
highly  American.  But  an  acquaintance  with 
Cicero,  and  even  with  Carnegie,  won't  help 
you  to  it. 

It  is  for  this  reason  that  the  change  in  chairs 
is  susceptible  of  improvement.  The  better  ad- 
vancement and  future  prospects  of  the  youth  of 
the  land  demand  that  universities  shall  throw 
out  history  and  languages  as  already  they  are 
throwing  classics  and  calculus,  and  in  their  stead 
provide  courses  on  What's  What.  And  what  is 
there  but  love  and  lucre  ? 

These  two  little  things  are  the  motor  forces 
of  society.  Beside  them,  barring  the  fashions 
and  the  charm  of  medisance — we  say  medisance 


188  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

because  it  sounds  so  much  more  cosmopolitan 
than  tittle-tattle — nothing  counts.  No,  nothing. 
Moreover,  they  are  as  potent  and  disintegrating 
as  radium.  Then,  too,  instruction  regarding 
them  is  really  diverting.  Students  who  take 
them  up  will  not  merely  learn  something,  they 
will  remember  it. 

To  be  rich,  for  instance,  seems  complex.  It 
is  very  simple.  In  an  educational  magazine,  not 
long  ago,  Professor  Carnegie,  Professor  Depew, 
and  other  savans  indicated  the  process.  Ac- 
cording to  Professor  Carnegie  you  must  push. 
Manners  do  not  make  the  millionaire.  Pro- 
fessor Depew  advocated  economy.  A  dollar  in 
the  bank  is  worth  two  on  a  margin.  Professor 
Mills  advised  not  more  than  eight  hours' 
sleep.  The  other  fellow  must  not  catch  you 
napping.  Professor  Morgan  recommended  in- 
vestments. We  believe  that  he  has  a  few  to 
unload.  Now  add  all  that  up,  and  wealth, 
which  looked  complex,  becomes  easy  as  ping- 
pong. 

Love  is  different.  To  love  and  to  be  loved 
seems  simple.  It  is  an  art  in  itself.  An  art  did 
we  say?  It  is  a  philosophy,  a  theosophy,  a 
pansophy  in  one.  It  is  a  science  whereby  the 
world,  the  flesh  and  the  devil,  the  solar  system, 


THE  COURTS  OF  LOVE  189 

the  universe — including  what  little  we  know  of 
it  and  all  that  we  do  not — are  reduced  to  a 
single  being. 

Sometimes  to  two  beings.  Occasionally  to 
three.  But  though  that  number  is  odd  there  is 
no  luck  in  it.  It  is  dangerous  in  addition  to 
being  inconvenient.  You  never  have  a  spare 
moment,  and  are  obliged  to  lie  like  a  thief. 
Two  are  less  exasperating.  Even  with  one  care- 
fully selected  being  your  hands  are  apt  to  be 
pretty  full.  When  that  being  is  legally  your 
very  own  you  will  find  it  advantageous  to 
confine  your  attentions  to  her.  Anyway,  it 
is  generally  admitted  that  it  is  better  to  have 
loved  your  wife  than  never  to  have  loved  at  all. 

These  remarks,  of  course,  are  purely  ethical. 
Love  is  not  that  by  a  long  shot.  Love  is  a 
vicious  little  chap.  He  is  essentially  selfish,  and, 
though  little,  the  biggest  tyrant  out.  A  statue 
is  not  more  callous.  A  hyena  is  less  cruel.  Per- 
sonally, we  should  prefer  a  cobra  about  the 
house.  A  cobra  you  can  elude.  But  not  a  bore 
— with  civility  at  least — and  when  that  little 
chap  is  not  sticking  pins  in  you  he  rivals 
our  best  selling  novelists  in  the  art  of  boring 
you  stiff. 

These  observations  have  a  false  air  of  origin- 


190  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

ality  which,  as  is  our  duty,  we  hasten  to  disclaim. 
They  have  all  history  for  support.  Out  of 
mythology, — and  even  there  apart  from  the 
account  which  Apuleius  gave  of  Cupid  and 
Pysche, — there  is  not  a  single  story  of  happily 
begun  and  happily  ending  love.  No,  not  one. 
As  pages  turn  and  faces  emerge,  always  when 
they  are  not  weeping  they  are  yawning. 

Why?  Because  love  is  not  merely  a  phil- 
osophy. It  is  a  poem  whose  strophes  age  can- 
not construe  and  youth  cannot  scan.  Because  of 
all  subjects  it  is  the  most  discussed  and  the 
least  understood.  Because  it  consists  in  the 
affection  of  someone  else.  Because  affections 
are  like  slippers,  they  will  wear  out.  Because 
the  angel  who  at  twenty  appeals  at  thirty  has 
been  known  to  appal. 

At  the  opera  now  and  then  you  may,  if  you 
are  in  luck,  hear  Cherubino  ask  the  ladies  who 
stand  about  to  tell  him  what  love  is.  The  ladies 
make  no  answer.  Not  because  they  are  rude. 
Still  less  because  they  are  ignorant.  But  because 
Mozart  did  not  care  to  have  them  disturb  the 
innocence  of  the  lad  with  an  aria  to  the  effect 
that  love  is  the  fusion  of  two  egotisms.  Truth 
should  be  charming  or  else  withheld. 

Truth  is  the  residuum  of  the  sciences  known 


THE  COURTS  OF  LOVE  191 

as  exact.  Among  these  sciences  love,  once  upon 
a  time,  just  escaped  admittance.  By  way  of 
compensation  it  was  codified.  What  is  more  to 
the  point,  the  code  became  law.  Judgments  in 
accordance  therewith  were  rendered  in  courts 
open  and  plenary. 

In  1907  these  courts  are  to  be  revived.  They 
are  to  be  revived  for  the  pleasure,  it  may  be, 
but  certainly  for  the  instruction,  of  visitors  to 
an  exposition  which  is  to  be  then  held  in  Milan. 
You  may  have  wondered  what  we  were  driv- 
ing at.  There  is  the  reason  of  these  remarks. 
There,  too,  is  a  tip  for  St  Louis.  There  also, 
perhaps,  is  the  model  of  the  schooling  which 
the  youth  of  our  country  lack. 

We  inject  that  "perhaps"  because  we  are 
sceptical  by  trade.  But  we  live  in  hopes.  Mean- 
while, Milan  being  remote,  1907  far  away,  and 
St  Louis  uncertain,  a  summary  of  the  instruc- 
tion may  contain  a  few  hints. 

The  elements  of  this  instruction  are  rumoured 
to  have  originated  in  Broceliande,  a  country 
which,  as  everybody  knows,  lies  somewhere 
within  the  confines  of  the  Arthurian  myth.  By 
whom  they  were  evolved  is  undetermined.  But 
it  has  been  authoritatively  suspected  that  they 
were  cradled  in  the  manuals  of  pure  courtesy 


192  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

with  which  chivalry  was  familiar  and  which 
society  has  forgot.  Anyway,  they  once  existed, 
and  existing  filtered  into  Provence,  where  a 
parliament  of  peeresses  did  them  over  into  a 
pandect,  of  which  the  statutes  survive.  Here 
are  some  of  them.  By  way  of  commentary 
we  may  note  that  licit  means  lawful,  and  il- 
licit the  reverse.  There  is  nothing  like  making 
things  clear.  But  oyez  : 

It  is  illicit  to  kiss  and  tell. 

It  is  illicit  to  love  anyone  whom  it  would  be 
illicit  to  marry. 

It  is  illicit  to  love  two  at  a  time. 

It  is  licit  to  be  loved  by  two,  by  three,  by  any 
number. 

It  is  illicit  to  be  open-armed  and  close-fisted. 

It  is  licit  for  a  woman  to  love  her  husband — 
if  she  can. 

It  is  illicit  for  a  lover  to  do  aught  that  might 
displease  his  lady. 

It  is  licit  for  a  lady  to  be  less  circumspect.  Et 
cetera,  and  so  forth. 

These  statutes,  always  candid,  sometimes  are 
profound.  They  disclose  an  understanding  of 
the  heart  and  its  subtleties.  It  was  over  matters 
of  this  delicate  nature  that  the  Courts  of  Love 
claimed— and  exercised— jurisdiction.  The  judges 


THE  COURTS  OF  LOVE  193 

were  dames  of  high  degree.  At  the  time,  in 
cases  of  tort  and  even  of  felony,  the  lord  of  a 
fief  possessed  the  right  of  justice,  high  and  low. 
But  there  are  crimes  now  which  the  law  cannot 
reach.  It  was  the  same  way  then.  There  were, 
and  are,  contentions  which  no  mere  male,  how- 
ever enfieffed,  may  adjust.  It  was  to  remedy 
this  defect  that  the  wives  of  the  seigneurs  erected 
tribunals  of  their  own.  Their  strength  was  their 
weakness.  They  were  pretty,  and  that  appealed. 
They  were  patrician,  and  that  appeased.  They 
took  themselves  seriously  too,  and  that  must 
have  been  very  satisfactory.  Moreover,  if  not 
always  clement,  occasionally  they  were 
quaint. 

Here  is  an  instance.  A  confidant  charged  by  a 
friend  with  messages  of  love  found  the  young 
person  so  much  to  his  taste  that  he  addressed 
her  in  his  own  behalf.  Instead  of  being  repulsed 
his  advances  were  encouraged.  Whereupon  the 
injured  party  brought  suit.  The  prothonotary 
of  the  court  relates  that  the  plaintiff,  having 
humbly  prayed  that  the  fraud  be  submitted  to 
the  Countess  of  Champagne,  the  latter,  sitting  in 
banco  with  sixty  dames,  heard  the  complaint, 
and  after  due  deliberation  handed  down  the 
following  decision : — "  It  is  ordered  that  the 

N 


194  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

defendants  be  henceforth  debarred  from  the 
frequentation  of  honest  people." 

Here  is  another  case.  A  knight  was  com- 
manded by  his  lady  not  to  say  or  do  anything 
publicly  in  her  praise.  It  so  fell  about  that  her 
name  was  lightly  taken.  The  knight  challenged 
the  defamer.  Thereupon  the  lady  contended 
that  he  had  forfeited  all  claim  to  her  regard. 
Action  having  been  brought  the  court  decided 
that  the  defence  of  a  lady  is  never  illicit,  and 
it  was  ordered  that  the  knight  be  rehabili- 
tated in  favour  and  reinstated  in  grace.  Which, 
the  prothonotary  avers,  was  done. 

But  how?  There  is  the  beautiful  part  of  it. 
To  the  Courts  of  Love  no  sheriffs  were  attached. 
Judgments  were  enforced  not  by  a  constabulary 
but  by  the  community.  Disregard  of  a  decision 
entailed  not  loss  of  liberty  but  loss  of  caste.  In 
the  case  of  a  man  there  was  exclusion  from  the 
field.  Entrance  was  denied  him  at  the  tourna- 
ments. In  the  case  of  a  woman  the  drawbridges 
were  up.  Throughout  the  land  there  was  no 
one  to  receive  her.  As  a  result  the  delinquent 
was  rare.  So,  too,  was  contempt  of  the  jurists. 

Such  were  the  Courts  of  Love.  Women  then 
did  more  or  less  as  they  saw  fit,  and  it  was  in 
order  that  they  might  do  what  was  fittest  that 


THE  COURTS  OF  LOVE  195 

those  tribunals  were  established.  They  had 
another  purpose.  In  guiding  the  affections  they 
educated  them.  Women  were  admonished  to 
love  and  instructed  how  to.  They  were  taught, 
we  will  assume,  that  they  who  please  generally 
fail  to  please  profoundly.  They  were  further 
taught,  we  will  also  assume,  that  to  please  pro- 
foundly a  woman  should  never  let  herself  be 
wholly  known.  Even  in  her  kisses  there  should 
be  mystery.  Moreover,  they  were  taught,  or 
ought  to  have  been,  that  when  to  mystery  there 
be  added  uncertainty,  and  the  two  be  sufficiently 
fused,  then  the  party  of  the  second  part  is  not 
merely  profoundly  pleased  but  confoundedly 
perplexed.  The  poor  devil  does  not  know  where 
he  is  at. 

For  of  all  things  mystery  and  perplexity  dis- 
turb the  imagination  most.  Of  all  factors  in  an 
enduring  affection  the  most  potent  is  imagination. 
The  woman  who  leaves  a  man  nothing  to  bother 
about  leaves  him  nothing  to  dread.  Inconstancy 
is  the  result.  The  brute  turns  to  pastures  new. 

But  the  woman  of  whom  a  man  is  never  sure 
has  him  crazy  about  her  for  the  rest  of  his 
wretched  career.  He  feels  that  he  could  cut  his 
throat  for  her.  When  a  man  does  not  feel  that 
way  he  has  no  feeling  at  all. 


196  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

Maxims  of  this  fastidious  morality  were,  we 
assume  without  effort,  handed  out  in  the  Courts 
of  Love.  But  pupils,  however  diligent,  make 
mistakes.  Though  the  decisions,  decretals,  and 
mandates  of  the  courts  were  highly  ethical, 
equitable  also  and  instructive  as  well,  occasion- 
ally misadventures  occurred.  Of  these  one 
which  has  been  disinterred  from  a  medieval 
manuscript  may  serve  as  instance.  It  runs  as 
follows : — 

"  My  Lord  Raymond  of  Roussillon  was  a  brave 
baron.  His  wife,  the  Lady  Marguerite,  was  the 
fairest  woman  in  the  land,  the  most  gifted  and 
serene.  It  happened  that  William  of  Cabstaing, 
a  poor  knight's  son,  came  to  the  court  of  my 
Lord  Raymond  and  asked  that  he  be  received 
as  varlet  there.  My  Lord  Raymond,  seeing 
that  he  was  handsome  and  hardy,  welcomed  him 
and  told  him  that  he  might  remain.  William 
did  so,  and  comported  himself  so  well  that 
my  lord  made  him  page  to  my  lady.  Now 
it  so  fell  about  that  one  day  the  page  composed 
for  the  Lady  Marguerite  the  song  which  says : 

"'  Sweet  are  the  thoughts 
Which  love  awakes  in  me.' 

"When   Raymond   of    Roussillon   heard   that 


THE  COURTS  OF  LOVE  197 

song  he  sent  for  William,  led  him  far  from  the 
castle,  cut  off  his  head,  put  it  in  a  basket,  cut  his 
heart  out,  and  put  it  in  the  basket  too.  Then 
Raymond  returned  to  the  castle.  He  had  the 
heart  roasted  and  served  at  table  to  his  wife, 
and  made  her  eat  it  without  knowing  what  it 
was.  When  the  meal  was  over,  Raymond  stood 
up  and  told  his  wife  that  what  she  had  eaten 
was  the  heart  of  the  Knight  William,  and 
fetched  and  showed  her  the  head,  and  asked 
her  if  the  heart  had  tasted  well.  She  under- 
stood what  he  said.  She  saw  and  recognised  the 
head  of  the  Knight  William  and,  answering,  she 
replied  that  the  heart  had  been  so  good  and 
appetising  that  never  other  food  or  other  drink 
should  take  from  her  mouth  the  savour  which 
it  had  left  there.  Raymond  ran  at  her  with  his 
sword.  She  fled  away,  threw  herself  from  a 
balcony,  and  broke  her  skull. 

"All  this  was  told  throughout  the  realm  of 
Aragon.  The  King  Alphonse  and  all  his  barons 
and  all  his  counts  had  great  grief  at  the  death 
of  the  knight  and  of  the  lady  whom  Raymond 
had  so  abominably  destroyed.  They  made  war 
on  him,  and  having  taken  him  and  his  castle, 
and  slain  him  there,  the  King  Alphonse  erected 
at  Perpignan  a  monument  to  William  and  to 


198  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

Marguerite,   and  all  perfect   lovers  prayed  for 
their  souls." 

A  gentleman  never  sees  or  hears  anything 
that  was  not  intended  for  him.  The  lesson 
in  pure  courtesy  which  Raymond  got  from 
Alphonse  was  well  deserved.  But  it  was  in- 
sufficient. He  should  have  had  his  ghost  kicked. 
At  the  same  time,  if  episodes  such  as  that  are 
to  be  given  in  the  revival  of  the  Courts  of 
Love,  we  would  not  miss  it  for  a  farm. 


XVI 
BLUEBEARD 

IN  the  music-maddened  nights  of  a  generation 
ago  there  was  imported  for  the  benefit  of  old 
New  Yorkers,  who  then  were  young,  a  little  dish. 
The  importation  was  effected,  and  served  too 
perhaps,  by  way  of  finish  to  the  banquets  of 
delight  which  the  opera  seria  provided.  The 
dish  was  "Barbe  Bleue."  In  was  light  and 
palatable.  It  suggested  nothing  so  much  as 
cream  beaten  with  champagne  into  an  ethereal 
foam.  It  left  none  of  the  after  taste  of  truffles 
and  red  pepper  which  the  more  gorgeous  fare 
produced.  It  expressed,  as  music  should,  that 
which  cannot  be  told  and  concerning  which  it 
is  impossible  to  be  silent.  Yet,  though  it 
charmed,  it  did  not  satisfy.  It  surprised  and 
evoked.  For  who  was  this  chimerically-bearded 
prince,  who  sang  so  deliciously  and  behaved  so 
ill,  who  married  and  murdered  so  melodiously? 
From  what  land  did  he  come?  And  was  it  all 

real  or  was  it  romance? 
199 


200  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

These  problems  shuttled  the  score.  At  this 
late  date  we  can  hardly  look  back  and  swear 
that  they  kept  us  awake,  but  with  due  regard 
to  that  love  of  truth  which  is  our  main  con- 
solation we  may  conscientiously  affirm  that, 
in  the  pauses  of  later  interludes,  they  returned, 
as  problems  will  return,  demanding  solution, 
exacting  research,  until,  now,  here  at  last,  they 
are  to  have  their  way. 

For  Bluebeard  was  no  more  a  creation  of 
Offenbach — or  for  that  matter  of  Perrault — than 
Don  Juan  was  a  creation  of  Mozart  or  even  of 
Moliere.  These  two  great  figures  really  lived, 
yet  Bluebeard  the  more  astonishingly.  Ac- 
cording to  the  documents  contained  in  what 
is  technically  known  as  his  proces-verbal — on 
which,  parenthetically,  our  friend  and  brother- 
in-letters,  J.  K.  Huysmans,  some  time  since  laid 
violent  hands  —  his  name  was  Gilles  de  Ketz, 
and,  at  a  period  contemporaneous  to  the  ap- 
parition of  Jeanne  d'Arc,  he  was  seigneur  of  the 
domain  of  Tiffauges  and,  therewith,  seigneur  de 
lieux  dont  f  ignore  le  compte. 

The  domain  of  Tiffauges  squats  in  an  edge  of 
Brittany.  The  manor  is  still  there.  Its  towers 
have  tottered,  the  moat  is  choked,  the  draw- 
bridge has  crumbled.  But  the  massive  wings 


BLUEBEARD  201 

of  the  keep — festooned  with  lichens  and  astra- 
galed  with  moss — extend  intact.  The  interior 
rhymes  with  the  walls.  There  are  high 
baronial  halls,  contracted  cells,  narrow  corri- 
dors, a  stairway  which  cavalry  could  mount, 
other  stairs  precipitately  spiral,  a  circular 
gallery  where  the  guard  was  stationed,  a 
chapel  in  which  a  choir  sang,  a  silence  which 
you  can  feel,  an  odour  of  ruin,  a  sensation  of 
chill,  a  savour  of  things  dead  and  damned,  an 
impression  of  space,  of  shapes  of  sin,  of 
monstrous  crimes,  of  sacrilege  and  sorcery. 

To-day  the  castle  is  a  skeleton.  Yet  in  the 
days  that  were  it  must  have  been  sumptuously 
if  strangely  splendid,  a  succession  of  elaborate 
suites  hung  with  exquisite  tapestries,  furnished 
with  that  art  which  only  the  fifteenth  century 
knew,  set  with  combinations  of  woods,  colours, 
leathers,  silks,  and  metals,  decorated  with  amaz- 
ing frescoes,  with  scenes  of  pagan  love  and 
pastoral  affections.  There,  amid  the  blare  of 
fanfares  and  the  swirl  of  plumes,  Gilles  de 
Retz  held  court  and,  while  he  was  about  it, 
other  things  too. 

The  chronicles  of  the  day  unite  in  describing 
him  as  insolently  rich  and  alarmingly  good- 
looking,  a  fine  chap,  a  brave  soldier,  un- 


202  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

fathomably  devout,  serving  featly  his  God  and 
loyally  his  king — so  loyally  that  at  the  toler- 
ably adolescent  age  of  twenty-five  Charles  VII. 
created  him  Marshal  of  France.  The  point  to 
be  noted,  though,  is  that  devoutness.  At  the 
time  an  epidemic  of  mysticism,  induced  by 
the  occurrences  connected  with  Jeanne  d'Arc — 
with  whom,  by  the  way,  he  had  assisted  at 
the  siege  of  Orleans  —  infected  the  doct.  It 
infected  Gilles.  The  fever  of  it  accentuated 
his  fervour.  He  surrounded  himself  with  pre- 
lates, enlarged  his  choir,  alternated  between 
mass  and  meditation,  aspired  to  union  with 
the  supersensible,  imitated  the  inimitable  life. 
Existence  then  was  not  what  it  had  been  before 
or  what  it  had  since  become.  For  noblesse  oblige 
read  noblesse  neglige.  The  lords  and  gentry 
were  lack-lustre  brutes,  ignorant  as  carps,  with- 
out other  aims  than  dice,  without  other  ambitions 
than  brawls.  Gilles  de  Retz  had  as  much  in 
common  with  them  as  they  had  with  him.  He 
was  a  scholar,  a  musician,  and  a  poet.  In  an 
age  in  which  no  one  read  he  wrote.  In  an  age 
in  which  the  best  music  was  the  click  of  swords 
he  preferred  the  hum  of  harps.  In  an  age  in 
which  the  foremost  diversion  was  drink  he 
collected  curious  missals,  startling  gems,  and  sur- 


BLUEBEARD  203 

prising  birds.  Within  the  moat  pink  flamingoes 
brooded  and  about  it  white  peacocks  flocked. 
He  delighted  in  the  conversation  of  thinkers, 
in  the  observations  of  artists,  in  the  subtleties 
of  metaphysicians.  In  his  large  and  splendid 
castle  he  entertained  magnificently  all  who 
came,  providing  not  merely  open  house,  but  the 
spectacle  of  a  great  noble  living  nobly,  a  prince 
properly  presented,  one  who  had  his  own  men- 
at-arms,  his  own  garrison,  and  therewith  pages, 
squires,  knights,  deans,  vicars,  choristers,  and, 
above  and  beyond  these,  the  right  of  justice 
high  and  low. 

To-day  the  castle  crouches  sullenly.  In  the 
meagre  hamlet  at  its  base  there  are  women 
who  cross  themselves  at  mention  of  its  former 
lord.  To  them  he  is  Barbe  Bleue.  Not  the 
Bluebeard  of  the  lyric  stage  nor  yet  the  Blue- 
beard of  the  fairy  tale,  but  the  monster  who 
maltreated  and  murdered. 

It  is  the  opinion  of  thinkers  that  the  conscious 
gratification  of  the  senses  is  an  unconscious 
flight  toward  the  ideal,  that  the  most  poignant 
excesses  are  engendered  by  a  desire  for  the  im- 
possible, by  aspirations  for  that  felicity  which 
is  superterrestrial  and  divine.  These  premises 
accepted,  it  may  be  then  that  the  gulf  of  blood 


204  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

which  Gilles  proceeded  to  undike  is  susceptible 
of  explanation.  But  what  was  his  own  ex- 
cuse? Or  rather,  by  what  sudden  steps  was  the 
mystic  converted  into  a  reptile?  The  question 
seems  complex.  The  answer  is  simple.  It  will 
be  found  in  the  limitations  of  wealth.  During 
the  progress  of  the  war  for  which  he  had 
furnished  troops,  during  the  leisures  of  court, 
where  in  his  quality  of  great  noble  he  had 
advanced  sums  more  or  less  imposing,  and 
during  the  prodigalities  at  Tiffauges,  where 
he  resided  in  a  fashion  entirely  regal,  his  pat- 
rimony had  become  tolerably  fluid. 

In  an  effort  to  maintain  the  splendour  to 
which  he  was  accustomed,  he  mortgaged  fiefs? 
bartered  farms,  alienated  domains,  and  even  put 
jewels  in  pawn.  His  heirs  took  fright.  Charles 
was  petitioned  to  interfere.  As  a  result,  by 
letters  patent  Gilles  de  Retz  was  inhibited  from 
further  disposing  of  his  property,  and  there 
suddenly  was  this  sumptuous  individual  liter- 
ally without  a  copper. 

In  epochs  more  modern  and  recent,  individuals 
less  sumptuous,  perhaps,  but  equally  prodigal, 
have  found  themselves  in  a  similar  plight.  To 
remedy  it  some  have  taken  to  trade,  some  have 
taken  to  stocks.  None  of  these  avenues  was 


BLUEBEARD  205 

open  to  Bluebeard.  But  at  the  time  there  was 
another  and  a  wider  one,  an  immense  highway 
descending  from  the  remotest  past,  but  which 
latterly  had  dwindled  into  a  blind  alley  with  a 
dead  wall  at  the  end.  In  it  was  a  group  of 
savans,  a  congress  of  the  wise  men  and  char- 
latans of  the  day.  Gilles  joined  them.  Or,  to 
be  exact,  those  whom  he  could  he  lured  to 
Tiffauges. 

These  people  were  called  hermetics.  They 
were  in  search  of  the  alkahest  which  Hermes 
discovered  and  which  had  enabled  the  satraps 
of  eld  to  create  enchantments  which  the  world 
no  longer  knows,  to  erect  at  will  cities  fairer 
than  the  uplands  of  dream,  palaces  more  lu- 
minous than  the  twelve  signs  of  the  zodiac,  and 
with  them  shimmering  retrospects  of  paradise. 
The  escaping  memories  of  that  alkahest  Cali- 
gula had  tried  in  vain  to  detain.  Bacon  sought 
them  in  alembics,  Thomas  Aquinas  in  ink. 

Experiments  not  similar,  but  cognate,  had 
resulted  in  the  theory  that  at  that  later  day 
success  was  impossible  without  the  intervention 
and  direct  assistance  of  the  Very  Low.  The 
secret  had  escaped  too  far,  memories  of  it  had 
been  too  long  ablated,  to  be  rebeckoned  by 
natural  means.  For  the  recovery  of  the  evapor- 


206  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

ated  arcana  it  was  necessary  that  Satan  should 
be  evoked. 

Satan  at  that  time  was  very  real.  The 
atmosphere  was  so  heavy  with  his  legions  that 
spitting  was  an  act  of  worship.  In  the  gloom 
of  the  abbeys  legates  of  his  shouted  tauntingly 
at  the  cowering  monks :  "  Thou  art  damned ! " 
In  the  cathedrals,  through  shudders  of  song,  his 
voice  had  been  heard  inviting  maidens  to  swell 
the  red  quadrilles  of  hell.  From  encountering 
him  at  every  turn  society  had  become  used  to 
his  ways,  and  had  imagined  that  pact  whereby, 
in  exchange  for  the  soul,  Satan  agrees  to  furnish 
whatever  is  wanted. 

For  the  sake  of  gold  into  that  pact  Gilles 
presently  prepared  to  enter.  The  crucibles, 
retorts,  aludels,  and  furnaces  which  the  al- 
chemists unpacked  at  Tiffauges  cooked  nothing 
which  savoured,  however  slightly,  of  the  alka- 
hest. They  were  repacked,  the  alchemists  dis- 
missed, and,  from  the  confines  of  the  Sabbat, 
into  the  manor  magicians  trooped.  Either  the 
Very  Low  was  then  evoked  or  else  they  lied 
basely.  It  will  be  said  that  they  lied.  But 
may  not  the  evocation  of  Satan  consist  less  in 
actual  apparition  than  in  suffering  evil  to  enter 
the  heart,  in  suffering  it  to  batten  there  until 


BLUEBEARD  207 

it  has  gnawed  the  finer  fibres  away,  until  it 
has  made  us  as  base  as  we  have  conceived  Satan 
to  be? 

Something  of  that  kind  must  have  occurred 
in  this  horrible  keep.  Gilles  De  Retz  became 
really  possessed.  Alchemy  failing,  the  soul  of 
the  mystic  turned  a  somersault,  and  where  the 
saint  had  been  the  vampire  emerged. 

"There  is,"  he  announced,  "no  one  on  the 
planet  who  has  dared  what  I  have  done."  We 
believe  him.  It  was  under  his  hand  that  the 
real  massacre  of  the  innocents  occurred.  Satan 
was  supposed  to  enjoy  the  blood  of  the  young, 
and  to  minister  to  that  taste  Gilles  killed  boys 
and  girls,  stalking  them  as  another  stalks  game. 
In  eight  years  he  bagged  eight  hundred.  More 
perhaps,  for  he  had  not  kept  tally. 

Meanwhile  the  country  was  devastated.  Where- 
ever  he  passed  shepherds  vanished  and  school- 
girls disappeared.  His  first  victim  was  a  little 
boy,  whose  heart  he  extracted,  whose  wrists 
he  severed,  whose  eyes  he  dug  out,  and  with 
whose  blood  he  wrote  an  invocation  to  Satan. 
Then  the  list  elongated  immeasurably.  That 
lair  of  his  echoed  with  cries,  dripped  with  gore, 
shuddered  with  sobs.  The  subterranean  pas- 
sages were  turned  into  cemeteries,  the  high 


208  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

walls  reeked  with  the  odour  of  burning  bones, 
and  through  them  Bluebeard  prowled,  a  virtuoso 
and  vampire  in  one,  conjecturing  how  he  might 
destroy  not  merely  bodies  but  souls,  inventing 
fresh  repasts  of  flesh,  devising  new  tortures, 
savouring  tears  as  yet  unshed,  and  with  them 
the  spectacle  of  helpless  agony,  of  unutterable 
fear,  the  contortions  of  little  limbs,  simul- 
taneously subjected  to  hot  irons  and  cold  steel. 
It  is  said  that  some  of  the  children  cried  very 
little  but  that  the  colour  passed  from  their 
eyes. 

There  is  a  limit  to  all  things  earthly.  Pre- 
cisely as  no  one  may  attain  perfection,  so  has 
sin  its  bounds.  There  are  depths  beneath  which 
there  is  nothing  deeper.  To  their  ultimate 
plane  Gilles  de  Retz  descended.  There,  smitten 
perhaps  with  terror,  he  considered  the  possi- 
bility of  groping  back  through  penitent  acts, 
pious  endowments,  and  nights  of  prayer. 

It  was  too  late,  however.  The  echo  of  the 
cries  with  which  the  castle  rang  had  reverber- 
ated beyond.  The  odour  of  the  calcinated  had 
filtered  through  the  land.  The  anguish  of 
parents  fused  with  these  things,  and  so  insist- 
ently that  the  conjunction  of  clamours  and 
stenches  reached  Nantes,  with,  for  result,  the 


BLUEBEARD  209 

besieging  of  Tiffauges,  the  taking  of  Gilles,  his 
arrest,  imprisonment,  public  confession — a  con- 
fession so  monstrous  that  women  fainted  of 
fright,  and  a  priest,  rising  in  horror,  veiled  the 
face  on  a  crucifix  which  hung  from  the  wall — 
a  confession  followed  by  excommunication  and 
the  stake.  Et  ainsi  fini  Vhistoire  de  Barbe 
Bleue. 

Yet  where  in  this  super-Neronian  history  is 
Barbe  Bleue?  Surely  Gilles  de  Retz  is  not  the 
charming  prince  who  married  and  murdered  so 
melodiously?  Surely  he  is  not  the  Bluebeard 
whom  we  met  in  the  nursery  and  who  warned 
his  wife  not  to  see  anything  which  was  not 
intended  for  her;  surely,  in  spite  of  certain 
vagaries,  that  noble  hero  was  not  this  ignoble 
hyena. 

And  yet  he  was.  Legend  takes  strange 
licences.  Sometimes  he  will  so  smear  a  seraph 
that  he  will  look  like  a  fiend,  and  again  it  will 
make  a  villain  look  highly  virtuous.  Tiberius, 
we  are  convinced,  never  dreamed  of  the  in- 
famies which  are  imputed  to  him,  and  had  the 
ghost  of  Washington  any  sense  of  humour, 
which  is  doubtful,  it  would  be  rather  amused 
at  the  veneration  in  which  his  memory  is 
held, 
o 


210  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

It  was  much  the  same  thing  with  Gilles  de 
Retz.  The  legend  regarding  him  fattened  on 
frescoes  instead  of  on  facts.  Some  years  ago, 
in  a  Breton  church  which  dates  from  the 
thirteenth  century,  there  was  found  a  series 
of  mural  paintings.  In  one  you  behold  the 
marriage  of  a  noble  demoiselle  to  an  equally 
noble  seigneur.  In  the  next  there  is  the  same 
seigneur.  He  is  leaving  his  castle,  and  as  he 
goes  he  entrusts  to  his  wife  a  little  key.  The 
scenes  which  follow  represent  the  lady  peering 
into  a  room  from  the  rafters  of  which  six 
women  hang.  Then  come  the  return  of  the 
lord,  his  questioning  and  menacing  glance,  the 
tears  of  the  lady,  her  prayers  to  her  sister, 
the  alarm  of  the  latter,  the  interruption  of  her 
brothers,  and  her  rescue  from  sudden  death. 

The  story  which  the  frescoes  tell  still  endures 
in  Brittany.  There  is  many  another  like  it. 
One  and  all  have  Gilles  de  Retz  for  hero.  Yet 
for  the  honour  of  his  race,  instead  of  his  name, 
that  of  Bluebeard  has  been  given. 

So,  at  least,  says  Michelet.  Michelet  usually 
knew  what  he  was  talking  about.  He  devoted 
forty  years  to  his  history  of  France.  When 
he  finished  it  he  sighed  and  said:  "I  have 
swallowed  too  many  vipers,  too  many  kings." 


BLUEBEARD  211 

Gilles  de  Retz  must  have  been  one  of  the  former. 
In  any  event,  Michelet  had  at  his  disposal  texts 
which  we  lack.  Lacking  the  texts,  we  lack 
also  pretexts  for  differing  with  him.  We  as- 
sume, therefore,  that  it  is  as  he  has  explained 
it.  Moreover,  other  historians,  otherwise  com- 
petent, have  stated  that  Gilles,  after  marrying 
Catherine  de  Thouars,  one  of  the  great  heiresses 
of  the  day,  subsequently  and  successively  be- 
came the  husband  of  six  other  women  —  a 
circumstance  which,  the  frescoes  aiding,  doubt- 
less suggested  to  Perrault  the  tale  with  which 
we  are  all  familiar  and  from  which  Offenbach 
wove  his  enchanting  score. 

Yet  whether  he  murdered  those  women,  or 
whether  they  just  died  of  delight,  we  have  now 
no  means  of  knowing.  What  we  do  know  is 
that  this  vampire  really  lived,  and  that  his  lair 
any  tourist  may  visit. 

In  considering  it,  even  the  indifferent  must 
wonder  how  such  a  contradiction  could  be,  how 
it  is  possible  that  a  man  could  alternately  charm 
and  torture,  pray,  and  deprave.  The  complexity, 
however,  is  common  enough.  It  is  due  to  what 
novelists  call  heredity,  what  psychologists  term 
dual  personality,  and  plain  people  the  Old 
Adam.  More  or  less,  and  generally  more  than 


212  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

less,  it  exists  in  us  all.  Its  home  is  the  brain. 
In  the  majority  of  civilised  beings  it  is,  through 
one  factor  or  another,  subordinated  and  con- 
trolled, sometimes  forgotten,  more  often  ignored. 
But  it  is  there.  And  when,  through  the  shock 
of  atoms,  the  play  of  destiny,  excess  of  fatigue 
or  cerebral  commotion,  the  other,  the  inherited, 
the  secreted  self  appears,  then  from  the  indi- 
vidual ordinarily  normal  emerges  the  human 
reptile. 

Such  is  Bluebeard's  case.  Such,  too,  perhaps 
is  the  meaning  of  the  archaic  allegory  which 
symbolised  the  struggle  between  Darkness  and 
Light. 


XVII 

THE    KNIGHTS    OF    THE     GOLDEN 
FLEECE 

THE  Golden  Fleece  is  just  like  the  Garter.  It 
has  none  of  the  confounded  nonsense  of  merit 
about  it.  Medieval  and  magnificent,  it  was 
originated  by  Philip  of  Burgundy.  Why  he 
originated  it  no  one  knows.  A  German  tried  to 
find  out.  He  devoted  the  whole  of  his  wretched 
life  to  the  subject.  On  his  death-bed  he  chat- 
tered "Eureka."  It  had  driven  him  insane. 

Students  less  pertinacious,  and  possibly  better 
equipped,  have  assumed  that  the  motive  was 
wholly  gallant.  Philip,  to  his  eternal  glory  be 
it  recorded,  paid  what  we  think  we  have  seen 
described  as  addresses  to  twenty-four  young 
women  at  once.  Then  came  the  twenty-fifth. 
The  latter  was  Ysabel  of  Portugal.  Meanwhile, 
from  each  of  the  others  he  had  obtained  coils  of 
hair.  These  he  had  his  coiffeur  braid  together 

into  a  sort  of  conglomerate  souvenir.    Through 
213 


214  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

it  there  straggled  an  amber  curl ;  it  had  come 
from  the  bright  blonde  locks  of  Marie  of  Rum- 
brugge.  The  sheen  of  it  delighted  him.  From 
it,  from  that  girl's  empty  head,  the  idea  of  the 
Golden  Fleece  emerged.  On  the  occasion  of  his 
marriage  to  Ysabel  thirty  knights  were  chosen. 
Whether  he  required  that,  like  himself,  they 
should  be  sans  pudeur  et  avec  reproches,  we  may 
surmise  yet  never  know. 

What  we  do  know  is  that  self-chosen  knights 
of  a  different  order  with  the  same  name  have 
been  parading  about  ever  since.  In  philosophic 
circles  their  order  is  generally,  if  figuratively, 
regarded  as  the  insignia  of  the  carpet  highway- 
men and  other  adventurers  with  whom  the  great 
capitals  of  this  little  globe  abound. 

High  on  the  list  of  them  is  Lauzun.  Insolent, 
indigent,  and  illiterate,  the  son  of  a  nonentity  at 
that,  he  yet  managed  to  make  himself  Marshal 
of  France  and  the  husband  of  the  Grande  Made- 
moiselle. And  not  merely  her  husband,  but  her 
master,  ordering  that  princess,  who  was  the 
cousin  of  one  king  and  the  granddaughter  of 
another,  to  pull  off  his  boots,  and  beating  her 
when  she  refused.  The  story  of  his  career  would 
read  as  a  romance  were  it  not  that  from  it  the 
probable  is  absent.  Men  do  not  dream  any  more 


KNIGHTS  OF  THE  GOLDEN  FLEECE   215 

as  that  man  lived.  Emerging  obscurely  from  an 
obscure  hamlet,  the  high  road  led  him  to  Ver- 
sailles, and  chance  into  the  presence  of  the 
king. 

There  he  made  himself  so  entertaining  that 
the  fourteenth  Louis  raised  the  adventurer  from 
one  grade  to  another,  and  so  monumentally, 
that  one  day,  angered  at  the  withdrawal  of  a 
promised  promotion,  he  whipped  out  his  sword, 
broke  it  across  his  knee,  and  tossing  it  with  a 
fine  clatter  at  the  feet  of  [the  king,  bawled  loudly 
that  it  was  disgraceful  to  serve  a  monarch  who 
could  not  keep  his  word. 

Woman  admire  the  brave,  but  they  prefer 
the  audacious.  Some  women  at  least,  and 
Mademoiselle  de  Montpensier  was  one  of  them. 
The  melodrama  of  the  proceeding  delighted  her. 
Archroyal  and  super-rich,  possessed  in  her  own 
right  of  twenty  million  and  four  duchies,  she 
was  then  thirty  and  passably  disillusioned.  By 
reason  of  her  birth  and  wealth  she  had  expected 
to  be  queen.  She  had  had  her  eye  on  the 
Dauphin,  another  on  the  King  of  Spain,  both 
on  the  Emperor  Ferdinand  III.  Yet  none  what- 
ever for  Charles  II.,  who,  in  his  exile,  had  asked, 
and  who,  because  of  that  exile,  had  been  refused. 

Heights  appeal    to  women,  so    do    extremes 


216  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

Failing  a  throne,  the  Grande  Mademoiselle 
resolved  to  accept  a  footstool.  Lauzun  appealed 
to  her  as  even  the  closed  crown  of  state  had  not. 
The  adventurer  understood  it  thoroughly.  But 
at  every  step  she  made  toward  him  he  retreated 
two.  He  could  have  asked  and  it  would  have 
been  given.  He  preferred  to  be  asked  and  to 
accord.  Finally  he  did.  So  also  did  Louis.  At 
the  formal  request  of  the  lady  he  consented  to 
the  mesalliance,  and  there  was  this  nobody 
almost  lifted  into  royalty — almost,  yet  not  quite. 
For  reasons  which  we  won't  bother  over,  the 
king  withdrew  his  consent.  Lauzun  was  thrown 
into  prison,  whence  he  issued  years  later,  and 
then  only  because  of  the  supplications  of  the 
princess  whom  he  had  bewitched,  who  then 
became  his  wife,  whom  he  ordered  to  pull  off 
his  boots,  and  who,  annoyed  perhaps  at  the 
beatings  which  she  got,  gathered  her  millions 
and  her  duchies  and  left  him  to  twirl  his  thumbs. 
There  you  have  a  true  picture  of  the  untrue 
knight. 

An  instance  more  modern  and  rather  more 
modest  is  that  of  Baron  Harden-Hickey.  Born 
in  San  Francisco,  the  son  of  eminently  respect- 
able yet  perfectly  plain  people,  he  evolved, 
entirely  to  their  astonishment,  and  perhaps  a 


KNIGHTS  OF  THE  GOLDEN  FLEECE   217 

little  to  his  own,  a  dream  of  monarchy.  His 
title  astonished  also.  Where  he  got  it  no  one 
knew  and,  except  the  police,  no  one,  to  our 
knowledge,  ever  asked.  It  may  be  that  the 
Comte  de  Chambord,  whose  henchman  he  had 
been,  gave  it  to  him,  or,  as  is  more  likely,  it 
may  be  that  it  was  self-bestowed.  After  all, 
why  not?  In  any  event,  a  dozen  years  ago  he 
acquired,  in  addition  to  the  title,  the  formidable 
reputation  of  being  one  of  the  wittiest  men  in 
Paris  and  the  crack  duellist  of  France.  A  poet 
at  his  hours  and  always  a  scholar,  he  was  doubly 
dangerous.  His  pen  stung  as  promptly  as  did 
his  sword.  As  a  consequence  he  was  well  sup- 
plied with  enemies.  He  had  more  than  he 
knew  by  sight.  But  their  quality  was  superior. 
A  stranger  to  them,  he  was  a  stranger  to  his 
friends,  a  stranger  to  himself,  yet  most  con- 
spicuously a  stranger  to  his  epoch.  He  was  at 
odds  with  it.  In  an  age  less  complex  he  would 
have  been  a  pirate,  and  a  very  good  pirate  too. 
He  was  a  survival,  as  lost  on  the  boulevards  as 
a  corsair  would  be.  He  had  beliefs  in  an  epoch 
which  had  dissipated  them  and  faiths  in  a  land 
from  which  they  have  gone.  Therewith  he  was 
antithesis  made  man.  He  edited  a  comic  paper 
and  wrote  a  book  on  metaphysics.  He  looked 


218  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

like  a  musketeer,  acted  like  a  debutante,  talked 
like  Aristophanes,  and  lived  like  a  sage. 

That  was  a  long  time  ago.  Presently  from 
Catholic  he  turned  Buddhist.  At  Andilly,  a 
Parisian  suburb,  where  he  had  a  country  house 
which  he  called  a  castle,  he  built  a  temple, 
decorated  it  with  the  lotus,  installed  the  wheel 
of  prayers,  and  entertained  Colonel  Olcott.  After 
Buddha  he  took  to  Voltaire.  Restless  as  a 
panther,  haunted  by  the  past,  pursued  by  visions 
of  Chambord,  he  needed  a  cause  or  a  flag.  It 
was  the  inability  to  find  either  which  brought 
to  him  the  dream  of  founding  a  monarchy  for 
himself.  "  There  is  nothing  worth  living  for," 
he  once  confided  to  the  deponent,  "  and,  what  is 
\vorse,  nothing  worth  dying  for  either."  But 
that,  too,  is  a  long  time  ago.  It  was  on  a  journey 
to  the  United  States  that  he  met  a  young  heiress, 
who  subsequently  became  his  wife.  Then,  out 
of  idleness,  or  perhaps  to  amuse  his  bride,  he 
wrote  a  tract  on  suicide.  Hardly  had  it  issued 
from  the  press  before  an  idea  of  a  monarchy  was 
hatched.  He  proposed  to  establish  a  kingdom  at 
Trinidad — a  speck  of  an  island  off  the  coast  of 
Brazil — and  proposed  also  to  establish  himself 
there  as  king.  Entirely  opera  bouffe,  he  entered 
into  the  scheme  with  a  seriousness  which  im- 


KNIGHTS  OF  THE  GOLDEN  FLEECE    219 

pressed  even  himself.  He  had  a  chancellerie  in 
New  York,  another  in  London.  Then  the  Powers 
intervened,  or  he  said  they  did,  and  he  turned 
an  eye  on  Hawaii.  But  at  this  juncture  an- 
nexation occurred ;  there  was  not  a  possible 
throne  in  sight,  and  like  a  true  Knight  of  the 
Fleece,  he. shot  himself. 

But  he  shot  himself  too  soon.  It  is  one  of  the 
disadvantages  of  death  that  it  prevents  the  de- 
parted from  participating  in  the  possibilities  of 
life.  Had  he  waited  he  might  have  been  king. 
There  was  a  throne  then  vacant,  a  throne  ram- 
shackle, remote,  and  ridiculous,  yet  none  the 
less  a  throne,  one  that  had  been  founded  by  just 
such  another,  by  an  adventurer  who  began  by 
being  French,  ended  by  being  German,  and  who 
managed  to  make  himself  an  American  monarch 
in  between — a  South  American  monarch  indeed, 
yet  still  a  monarch,  monarch  of  Araucania,  a 
land  which  he  ruled  under  the  style  and  title 
of  Aurelius  I. 

Who  he  was,  how  he  got  there,  above  all,  why 
he  wanted  to  be,  and  in  what  fashion  he  suc- 
ceeded in  becoming,  king,  are  matters  that  have 
been,  and  now  always  will  be,  problematic.  It 
is  known  that  his  name  was  De  Tonniens,  but 
other  data  are  scarce.  It  is  rumoured,  however, 


220  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

that  in  the  early  sixties  he  set  sail  from  Havre 
for  Peru.  With  him  went  a  cargo  of  umbrellas. 
As  it  never  rains  in  Peru,  what  he  did  with  the 
umbrellas  is  conjectural  in  the  extreme.  Perhaps 
he  took  them  to  Chili.  In  any  event,  ultimately 
he  reached  Araucania.  That  is  the  one  stretch 
of  territory  on  this  hemisphere  which  neither 
Spanish,  Portuguese,  Dutch,  nor  English  have 
ever  been  able  to  subdue.  A  portion  of  it  Chili 
has  gobbled,  but  the  larger  part  is  independent 
still.  Whether  the  umbrellas  appealed  to  the 
fantasy  of  the  Araucos,  and  whether  because  of 
them  they  allowed  De  Tonniens  to  constitute 
himself  king,  is  immaterial.  But  that  king  he 
became  is  history.  It  is  history,  too,  that  as  a 
means  of  livelihood  he  instituted  a  series  of  titles 
and  decorations,  which  he  took  to  Europe  and 
peddled  about.  The  supply  of  these  things  being 
greater  than  the  demand,  poverty  overtook  him 
and  he  died.  Meanwhile,  he  had  not  neglected  to 
establish  a  court.  According  to  a  recent  explorer 
— M.  Henri  le  Baux — the  Court  of  Araucania 
still  exists.  What  is  more,  the  throne,  though 
vacant,  exists  as  well.  There  would  be  a  chance 
for  Harden-Hickey.  There  yet  is  a  chance  for 
any  other  knight. 

Examples   such  as   the    foregoing  are    useful 


KNIGHTS  OF  THE  GOLDEN  FLEECE    221 

if  for  no  other  reason  than  because  they  show 
the  relativeness  of  things.  To  be  born,  as  Lauzun 
was,  a  nobody  and  to  marry  a  princess,  predicates 
charm.  To  be  born,  as  Harden-Hickey  was,  a 
plain  American,  and  to  dream  of  being  king, 
predicates  romance.  To  be  born,  as  De  Tonniens 
was,  a  bourgeois,  and  to  develop  into  a  monarch, 
predicates  enterprise.  But  to  be  born  a  slave 
and  to  become  an  emperor  shows  originality. 

Solouque  did  that.  He  began  life  with  a  dust- 
pan and  ended  it  with  a  sceptre.  At  the  age  of 
fifty  he  was  a  valet,  very  fat,  very  black,  ignorant 
as  a  carp,  unable  to  read,  unable  to  write.  But 
though  unable  to  write  he  could  make  his  mark 
— and  did.  Caught  on  the  crest  of  a  Haytian 
revolution,  he  flung  himself  from  it  into  power. 
On  his  return  after  some  sable  Marengo  the 
president  of  the  local  senate  capped  him  with 
a  crown  of  pasteboard  and  saluted  him  Faustin  I. 

Solouque  sent  to  Paris  for  a  real  crown,  sent 
for  two — the  second  for  the  drab  who  was  his 
consort;  and,  while  he  was  about  it,  sent  for 
thrones,  for  robes  of  ermine — all  the  tra-la-la  of 
state.  Therewith  he  instituted  a  civil  list,  a 
series  of  decorations,  and  created  Knights  of  the 
Ebon  Fleece.  The  court  chamberlain  was  the 
Due  de  Bonbon;  the  lords-in-waiting,  three  in 


222  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

number,  were  gratified  respectively  with  the 
titles  of  Prince  of  Watermelon,  Marquis  of 
Lemonade,  and  Viscount  of  Ice  Cream.  Their 
share  in  the  budget  was  placed  at  a  hundred 
gourds  per  annum.  When  they  asked  for  it  this 
Philip  of  Hayti  had  them  shot.  If  open-handed 
he  was  close-fisted.  One  day  he  held  a  review  of 
his  grenadiers.  Georges  d'Alaux,  a  writer  who 
was  there  at  the  time  and  who  has  left  a  book  on 
this  Offenbach  monarchy,  states  that  the  helmets 
of  the  guard  glittered  with  plaques,  on  which 
was  inscribed:  "Sardines  a  1'huile,  Barton  et  Cie, 
Marseilles."  Like  the  emperor,  the  grenadiers 
were  unable  to  read.  Presently  it  was  discovered 
that  they  were  unable  to  fight.  Projected 
against  neighbours  by  whom  they  were  demol- 
ished, Solouque  said  it  was  good  riddance. 
Thereat,  to  while  away  the  time,  he  created 
more  decorations,  more  nobility,  parodied  the 
•coronation  of  Napoleon,  ordered  a  general 
massacre,  abdicated,  fled  away  and  died,  full 
of  years  and  dishonours,  grotesque  to  the  end. 
Of  an  order  quite  as  grotesque,  yet  a  trifle 
more  recent,  was  De  Rougemont,  a  Frenchman 
who  spoke  English  with  a  German  accent,  and 
who,  after  an  alleged  thirty-year  residence  on 
the  Sea  of  Timor,  turned  up  not  long  ago  in 


KNIGHTS  OF  THE  GOLDEN  FLEECE    223 

the  columns  of  a  magazine.  According  to  his 
own  account  he  must  have  been  horn  with  an 
honest  imagination  and  a  love  of  misadventure, 
for,  according  to  that  same  account,  fate  con- 
ducted him  to  a  coral  reef  and  left  him  there 
with  but  a  dog  and  a  New  Testament.  The 
former  he  appears  to  have  preferred  to  any 
human  being  he  ever  met,  while  the  theological 
difficulties  which  he  encountered  in  the  latter 
seem  to  have  fully  occupied  his  leisure.  For 
amusement  he  rode  turtles,  steering  them  with 
kicks  in  the  eye,  built  a  house  of  pearl  shells, 
made  a  hammock  of  shark's  hide,  and  played 
pirate  with  pelicans,  whom  he  robbed  of  their 
fish.  For  visitors  he  had  parrots,  for  almanacs, 
stones.  And  so  the  years  fell  by.  Ultimately 
savages  appeared,  who,  on  beholding  him, 
fancied  that  they  were  all  dead  and  that  he  was 
the  Great  Spirit.  If  that  is  not  an  example  of 
honest  imagination,  one  may  wonder  what  is. 
Yet  here  is  more.  Conducted  by  the  aborigines 
to  the  mainland,  he  there  became  king  of  the 
tribe,  rescued  white  girls  from  black  men,  dis- 
covered gullies  of  gold  and  ditches  of  diamonds, 
conciliated  recalcitrant  cannibals  by  throwing 
handsprings  and  somersaults,  found  a  newspaper, 
read  in  it  that  the  deputies  of  Alsace  had  refused 


224  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

to  vote  in  the  German  Parliament,  marvelled 
thereat,  for  he  knew  nothing  of  the  war  of  1870, 
and,  as  much  perplexed  by  political  enigmas 
as  he  had  been  by  theological  difficulties,  left 
sceptre,  diamonds,  gold,  and  girls  behind,  made 
for  Melbourne,  shipped  for  London  before 
the  mast,  and  turned  up  safe  and  sound  in  the 
office  of  an  English  magazine. 

Everything  being  possible,  it  was  conjectured 
that  the  story  might  all  be  true.  The  north- 
western corner  of  Australia,  where,  as  king,  he 
had  resided,  is  a  region  still  unexplored.  More- 
over, was  not  Bruce  disbelieved  and  Du  Chaillu 
flouted  ?  The  eccentricity  of  the  story  consisted 
in  the  fact  that  a  gentleman  who  reached  Mel- 
bourne with  such  first-class  copy  in  his  head 
should  have  been  compelled  to  work  his  way 
to  London.  Mais  nul  nest  prophete.  The  story 
of  R.  Crusoe  de  Rougemont-Munchausen  was 
at  least  entertaining  enough  to  find  favour  in 
the  eyes  of  the  British  Association,  and  his 
hand-spring  device  for  charming  the  enemy 
may,  with  entire  deference,  still  be  commended 
to  Lord  Roberts  for  future  use  at  the  front. 

Meanwhile,  it  is  pleasant  to  note  that  in  a  sub- 
sequent issue  of  the  periodical  in  which  Mr  Alice 
de  Rougemont  first  told  of  his  adventures  in 


KNIGHTS  OF  THE  GOLDEN  FLEECE    225 

wonderland  there  appeared  a  caveat  to  the  effect 
that  the  editors  no  longer  vouched  for  his 
veracity.  It  were  difficult  to  be  more  circum- 
spect and  less  rude.  Elsewhere  he  was  labelled 
Psalmanazar.  But  the  label,  though  meant  to  be 
fierce,  was  merely  stupid.  De  Rougemont  gulled 
the  British  Association.  Psalmanazar  gulled 
Great  Britain.  By  the  press  at  large  De  Rouge- 
mont was  received  with  cheerful  incredulity. 
The  learned  reviews  swallowed  Psalmanazar 
whole.  De  Rougemont  produced  a  new  edition 
of  the  Australian  Nights,  Psalmanazar  produced 
a  new  language,  a  literature,  and  a  religion.  To 
this  day  nobody  knows  what  Psalmanazar's 
real  name  was.  What  is  De  Rougemont's  real 
name  nobody  cares. 

Psalmanazar  represented  himself  as  a  Japanese 
from  Formosa.  He  published  a  book  which  con- 
tained an  alphabet  of  his  own  manufacture,  por- 
traits of  false  gods,  pictures  of  fictitious  people, 
and  with  them  engravings  of  imaginary  shrines. 
It  was  accepted  as  gospel.  In  his  memoirs 
Psalmanazar  says  :  "I  was  but  twenty  and  I 
deceived  all  England."  The  Bishop  of  London 
became  his  patron.  He  lectured  at  Oxford,  took 
orders,  and  everything  else  he  could  get.  But 
then,  a  century  and  a  half  ago,  in  the  good  old 
p 


226  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

days  when  he  lived  and  lied,  knowledge  was 
limited  and  the  earth  was  not.  Had  De  Rouge- 
mont  come  then  his  success  might  have  been 
proportionate,  and  yet  again  it  might  not.  Suc- 
cess is  an  uncertain  quantity.  One  never  knows 
whom  it  will  visit  and  whom  avoid.  Keely  is  a 
case  in  point.  A  moralist  recommended  that 
nothing  but  good  should  be  said  of  the  dead. 
The  advice  is  excellent.  We  have  no  intention 
of  disregarding  it.  An  ex -waiter  who,  with 
nothing  more  complicated  than  a  half-dozen 
neologisms  and  as  many  concealed  tubes,  could 
extract  five  million  out  of  the  pockets  of  his 
fellow -citizens  deserves  something  better  than 
abuse.  He  deserves  enrolment  among  the 
Knights  of  the  Fleece.  He  deserves  even,  what 
we  lack  the  space  to  give  him,  a  full  biographical 
page.  In  days  when  speech  was  more  abstruse 
he  would  have  been  called  a  thaumaturge. 
Thaumaturgy  is  at  once  simple  and  complex. 
It  consists  in  making  a  stranger  feel  at  home 
and  then  in  taking  that  home  away.  There  are 
a  number  of  books  about  it.  Of  these  the  best 
bear  big  names.  They  are  signed  by  Albertus 
Magnus,  by  Nostradamus,  and  by  Paracelsus. 
They  are  not  uninteresting  either.  They  tell  of 
the  great  secret  which  is  the  philosopher's  stone 


KNIGHTS  OF  THE  GOLDEN  FLEECE    227 

and  how,  with  it,  metals  cannot  be  transmuted 
but  how  pocket-books  may.  More  or  less,  and 
generally  more  than  less,  every  Knight  of  the 
Fleece  knows  its  charms.  Apollonius  of  Tyana 
knew  them  thoroughly.  He  knew  other  things 
as  well.  He  knew  all  languages,  including  that 
of  Silence,  for  silence  is  a  language  too.  It  was 
in  the  latter  that  Keely  conversed.  So  subtle 
was  his  use  of  it  that  nobody  understood.  He 
eluded  comprehension.  There  was  his  secret. 
It  is  the  great  secret  of  all.  It  is  the  secret  of 
not  having  any,  and  yet  in  appearing  to,  which 
constitutes  the  philosopher's  stone.  With  it 
Keely  charmed  experts.  But  who  are  so  foolish 
as  wise  men?  Had  Keely  come  a  few  centuries 
earlier,  by  the  wise  men  of  the  day  he  would 
have  been  deified.  Such  is  luck,  or  rather,  such 
is  destiny. 

For  the  Gates  of  Life  are  double.  On  the 
one  stands  written  Too  Late.  On  the  other 
Too  Soon.  Between  them  chaps  like  these  get 
strangled. 


XVIII 
THE   UPPER  CIRCLES 

THE  Supreme  Court  of  Pennsylvania  has  decided 
that  a  belief  in  spiritualism  does  not  predicate 
insanity. 

It  would  be  curious  if  it  did.  In  this  country 
there  are  millions  who  believe  in  it.  In  Europe 
there  are  others.  In  Asia  there  are  more.  For 
all  we  know  to  the  contrary  there  are  a  lot  in 
Africa.  If  not,  there  ought  to  be.  It  was  in 
Africa  that  spiritualism  originated. 

Moses  found  it  there.  He  found  it  in  the 
crypts  of  Memphis.  These  crypts  were  difficult 
to  enter.  But  Moses,  whose  real  name,  by  the 
way,  was  Hosarisph,  happened  to  be  a  nephew 
of  old  Rameses.  The  relationship  was  a  pull. 
It  opened  for  him  doors  which  otherwise  would 
have  been  closed.  Behind  them  he  heard  all 
about  spiritualism. 

It  will  not  pay  you  to  hunt  for  evidence  of 

228 


THE  UPPER  CIRCLES  229 

this  in  that  part  of  the  Bible  which  is  associated 
with  him.  The  evidence  is  not  there.  Nor  in 
it,  either,  is  there  any  doctrine  of  a  future  life. 
These  things  were  not  given  to  everybody.  They 
were  reserved  for  the  few. 

Among  the  latter  were  the  priests.  The 
priests  had  three  ways  of  expressing  a  given 
idea.  The  first  was  ordinary  and  simple,  the 
second  complex  and  symbolic,  the  third  hiero- 
glyphic and  abstruse.  Any  term  used  by  them 
had,  therefore,  a  triple  signification.  It  could 
be  construed  naturally,  figuratively,  or  tran- 
scendentally. 

It  was  in  their  language  that  the  Mosaic 
views  were  originally  expressed.  When,  later, 
they  were  put  into  Phoanician;  when,  from 
that,  they  were  turned  into  Chaldaic;  and 
when,  subsequently,  the  latter  was  translated 
into  Greek,  the  original  meaning  had  gone. 
There  had  been  too  many  cooks.  St  Jerome, 
who  knew  pretty  much  all  that  was  going 
and  a  good  deal  that  was  not,  said  of  the 
residue  that  it  contained  as  many  secrets  as 
words,  and  that  each  word  held  several.  It 
is  for  this  reason  that  the  Pentateuch  no- 
where exhibits  any  evidence  of  spiritualism — 


230  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

any  evidence,  either,  of  a  doctrine  of  a  future 
life. 

These  things  were  secret  things,  and  secret 
things,  Moses  expressly  declared,  belong  to  the 
Lord. 

In  Egypt,  where  he  found  them,  crouched  the 
Sphinx.  Above  was  the  Phcenix.  In  the  one 
was  the  key  to  things  terrestrial.  In  the  other 
was  a  clue  to  things  divine.  The  Sphinx  ex- 
pounded the  mystery  of  life.  The  Phoenix 
explained  the  enigma  of  death. 

Moses  took  them  both.  But  he  did  not  display 
them.  In  their  perspectives  were  heights  and 
abysses.  On  the  heights  were  immensities;  in 
the  abysses,  worlds.  They  held  categories  greater 
than  the  average  mind  may  comfortably  con- 
template. As  a  consequence  the  doctrine,  with- 
held from  the  many,  was  reserved  for  the  few. 

The  reconstruction  of  the  doctrine — a  recon- 
struction relatively  recent — is  due  to  causes  so 
opposed  that  they  laugh  in  each  other's  faces. 
The  first  is  criticism  higher  than  that  which  is 
known  as  high ;  the  second  is  experimental 
psychology.  The  former  has  conducted  us  be- 
hind the  accepted  meaning  of  phrases  ;  the  latter 
has  led  us  to  the  threshold  of  another  sphere. 


THE  UPPER  CIRCLES  231 

Through  the  highest  criticism  obscurities  have 
become  limpid.  Through  experimental  psych- 
ology a  door  has  been  thrown  open  on  the 
invisible  and  the  respectability  of  atheism 
shocked. 

We  fail  to  see  why.  Demonstrations,  how- 
ever surprising,  ought  not  to  shock.  Only 
ignorance  should.  Yet  if  it  hurt,  too,  how 
many  there  are  that  would  yell.  Besides, 
though  it  may  be  more  cheerful  to  be  wrong 
in  your  beliefs  than  not  to  have  them  at 
all,  it  is  perhaps  a  mistake  to  regard  errors 
as  assets. 

But  far  be  it  from  us  to  seem  to  even  wish  to 
convert.  The  spirit  of  proselytism  is  not  in  us. 
At  present  writing  only  the  desire  to  show  the 
sanity  of  spiritualism  is.  That  sanity  has  for 
basis  premises  major  and  minor,  with  a  de- 
duction for  astragal. 

Here  are  the  premises:  First  is  the  cautious- 
ness of  nature.  Nature  neither  adds  nor  sub- 
tracts. She  does  not  increase  her  possessions. 
She  does  not  diminish  them.  She  puts  them 
up,  pulls  them  down,  and  does  them  over  anew. 
But  on  to  the  lot  she  holds  very  tight. 

It  is  for  this  reason  that  what  seems  to  us  to 


232  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

constitute  death  is  to  nature  but  the  consti- 
tuent of  a  change.  It  is  for  this  reason, 
because  nothing  dies.  Because  when  what  is 
called  death  occurs  there  ensues  not  a  cessa- 
tion of  energy  but  a  liberation  of  it.  A 
tenement  has  crumbled  and  a  tenant  gone 
forth.  Though  just  where  is  the  puzzle. 

It  would  be  convenient  to  say  that  that  puzzle 
was  solved  long  ago.  It  would  be  convenient, 
but  inexact.  Myriads  of  people  who  like  to 
have  others  do  their  thinking  have  pinned 
their  faith  on  a  residence  right  overhead.  The 
existence  and  accessibility  of  that  residence 
they  have  regarded  as  a  universal  belief. 

It  is  not  a  universal  belief.  Even  if  it  were 
the  fact  would  prove  nothing.  Every  universal 
belief  is  erroneous.  Public  opinion  is  the 
stupidity  of  one  multiplied  by  the  stupidity 
of  all.  The  majority  is  always  cocksure  and 
dead  wrong.  Th  belief  in  that  residence  is 
a  case  in  point. 

Primitive  fabulists  erected  an  edifice  of  dream, 
which  they  catalogued  Creation.  It  was  com- 
posed of  a  cellar,  a  groundfloor,  and  a  roof 
garden.  On  the  groundfloor  man  lived,  moved, 
and  had  his  being.  Then,  according  to  his  be- 


THE  UPPER  CIRCLES  233 

haviour,  he  was  tossed  into  the  cellar  or  shoved 
into  a  lift  and  shot  to  the  roof. 

The  idea  had  its  charms  and  also  its  de- 
ceptions. It  was  simple,  but  not  scientific. 
Science  has  shown  that  the  earth  stands  to 
creation  as  a  drop  of  water  does  to  the  sea. 
It  has  shown  that  within  the  relatively  narrow 
sphere  to  which  observation  is  at  present  con- 
fined there  are  not  less  than  three  hundred 
million  worlds.  These  worlds  we  may  assume 
do  not  revolve  there  just  for  the  fun  they  may 
get  out  of  their  own  gymnastics.  We  may 
further  assume  that  the  energy  loosed  among 
them  cannot  be  dissimilar  to  that  which  is 
recognisable  here.  By  way  of  corollary  we 
may  also  assume  that  there,  too,  are  sentient 
beings. 

There  are  the  premises.  They  hold,  we  hope, 
nothing  not  sane.  For  that  matter,  nothing, 
we  hope,  that  can  in  any  way  be  construed 
into  originality.  They  are  but  the  platitudes 
of  logic.  Now  for  the  deduction. 

If  the  premises  be  accepted,  and  with  them 
the  theorem,  that  man  has  not  fallen  from 
loftier  estate,  but  is  rising  to  one,  it  follows, 
or  seems  to  follow,  that  not  the  dwellers  on 


234  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

this  planet  alone,  but  those  strewn  through- 
out the  universe,  are  en  route  for  higher 
things.  In  which  event  it  is  advantageous 
to  know  what  our  individual  chances  are  of 
reaching  them.  That  knowledge  spiritualism 
supplies. 

Spiritualism  has  been  much  abused.  The 
abuse  is  righteous.  As  often  as  otherwise 
when  spiritualism  is  not  perfect  rot  it  is 
fraudulent  commercialism.  Yet  commerce  is 
not  conducted  solely  by  cheats.  There  are 
honest  men  everywhere,  even  in  jail.  Even 
in  spiritualism  there  are  scientists.  Their 
statements  may  be  derided.  But  so  were  the 
initial  statements  concerning  the  telephone. 
So  was  the  proclamation  of  wireless  tele- 
graphy. Such  derision  is  helpful.  It  is  a 
bountiful  Providence  that  has  enabled  us  to 
despise  whatever  we  do  not  understand.  And 
spiritualism,  even  to  its  believers,  perhaps 
particularly  to  its  believers,  leaves  a  good 
deal  in  the  dark.  That  also  is  a  dispensation 
of  Providence.  Were  spiritualism  able  to  solve 
every  problem,  we  who  cogitate  for  the  dis- 
traction which  cogitation  affords  would  have 
nothing  left  to  do  but  to  bore  ourselves  stiff. 


THE  UPPER  CIRCLES  235 

Anything  of  that  kind  would  be  very  dis- 
tressing. 

Meanwhile,  general  distrust  of  spiritualism 
has  been  due  not  merely  to  the  puerility  and 
trickery  of  its  manifestations  but  to  the  fact 
that  the  majority  of  us  believe  like  brutes  in 
the  reality  of  things. 

Of  all  illusions  reality  is  the  greatest.  Every- 
body knows,  for  instance,  that  flowers  grow,  but 
nobody  has  ever  heard  them  at  it.  That  is  only 
because  our  ears  are  not  adapted  to  receive  the 
vibrations.  Were  they  so  adapted  the  noise  of 
growing  flowers  would  be  thunderous.  Yet 
because  we  are  not  deaf  we  do  not  believe 
it.  None  the  less  the  vibrations  are.  In  the 
same  way,  because  we  are  not  blind  we  imagine 
that  there  can  be  nothing  which  is  not  obvious. 
It  is  the  obvious  only  that  is  illusory. 

"Ghosts!"  cried  Carlyle.  "Nigh  a  thousand 
million  of  them  walk  the  earth  at  noontide." 
Ocular  evidence  of  the  promenade  being  lack- 
ing we  could  wish  a  little  proof.  That  proof 
spiritualism  supplies.  It  is  voluminously  pro- 
vided in  the  reports  of  the  Society  for  Psychical 
Research.  But,  though  voluminous,  it  is  not 
always  luminous.  The  facts  displayed  are 


236  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

appallingly  trite.  Yet  they  are  facts  all  the 
same,  and  though  trite,  so,  too,  were  the  rot- 
ting logs  which  once  upon  a  time  Columbus 
beheld.  Beyond  those  logs  was  another  world. 

From  the  world  which  spiritualism  is  ap- 
proaching already  one  discovery  is  announced. 
One  is  a  great  many.  In  the  present  condition 
of  things  it  is  even  enormous.  For  in  this  dis- 
covery --a  discovery  rigorously  examined, 
patiently  tested,  and  scientifically  indorsed — is 
the  assurance,  positive  and  unequivocal,  that 
human  personality  persists  beyond  the  tomb. 

A  discovery  of  that  magnitude  and  certainty 
means  something.  Moreover,  in  it  there  are 
others.  Or,  rather,  from  it  data  depend.  For 
though  the  persistence  of  personality  is  shown, 
as  yet  nothing  has  been  adduced  which  confirms 
accepted  ideas  of  heaven,  nothing  in  support  of 
any  existing  creed. 

That  seems  odd.  But  where  all  is  marvellous 
the  marvellous  disappears.  The  phenomena 
detected  defy  explanation.  They  defy  refuta- 
tion as  well.  There  is,  though,  nothing  odd 
in  that.  The  phenomena  of  thought  do  the 
same.  The  latter  are  so  common  and  familiar 
that  we  give  them  no  heed.  Yet  the  human 


THE  UPPER  CIRCLES  237 

being  has  never  lived  who  understood  them. 
That  is  pretty  much  the  way  it  is  with  psychic 
phenomena.  Because  we  cannot  understand 
them  it  does  not  in  the  least  follow  that  they 
cannot  be. 

On  the  contrary.  Moreover,  in  reference  to 
them  Sir  William  Crookes  has  spoken  thusly: 
"I  do  not  say  that  such  things  may  be.  I  say 
that  such  things  are." 

Sir  William  is  not  a  crank.  He  is  not  a  poet. 
He  is  passionless  as  algebra,  precise  as  calculus, 
and  the  foremost  chemist  going.  He  is  some- 
body. In  the  course  of  explorations  conducted 
by  him  along  the  frontier  of  the  other  world 
he  has  officially  announced  that  he  has  been  the 
percipient  of  direct  communications,  the  be- 
holder of  phantom  forms.  One  of  the  latter,  a 
young  woman,  decorated  his  coat  with  a  rose, 
gave  him  a  lock  of  her  hair,  allowed  him  to  snap- 
shoot her,  and  sat  in  his  lap.  It  were  difficult  to 
be  more  sociable. 

Instances  similar,  cognate,  and  still  more 
curious  you  may  fish  from  the  reports  by  the 
ton.  Unless  you  prefer  to  regard  the  testimony 
as  a  mystification  devised  by  a  corps  of  savans 
and  scientists  for  no  other  purpose  than  your 


238  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

hocus-pocussing,  then,  though  the  testimony  be 
hard  to  swallow,  it  is  just  as  hard  to  reject. 
But  that  which  may  help  a  bit  to  get  it  down 
is  the  fact  that  the  deponents  go  as  far  as 
they  can,  but  not  an  inch  or  the  fraction  of  an 
inch  farther.  They  are  enabled  to  demonstrate 
the  persistence  of  consciousness  after  death 
and  the  visibility  of  the  unseen.  But  not  the 
immortality  of  the  soul. 

The  reason,  if  complex,  is  clear.  Travellers  re- 
turning from  the  upper  circles  bring  with  them 
only  what  they  took.  Only  that  and  their  ex- 
perience in  transit.  Their  understanding  is  not 
broadened.  Their  wisdom  is  not  increased. 
They  know  as  little  of  what  is  beyond  them  as 
we  know  of  what  is  beyond  us.  When  you 
come  to  think  of  it  that  is  in  the  nature  of 
things.  A  trip  across  the  country  never  develops 
faculties  which  the  traveller  lacked  when  he  set 
out.  It  is  probable,  therefore,  that  death  is  but 
a  posting-house,  where  horses  are  changed,  and 
whence  you  proceed  with  such  luggage  as  you 
brought. 

But  whither  you  proceed,  and  whether  in  pro- 
ceeding you  get  very  far,  fraudulent  spiritualism 
may  pretend  to  tell,  but  scientific  spiritualism 


THE  UPPER  CIRCLES  239 

cannot.  To  borrow  a  metaphor  from  the  land 
from  which  we  started,  the  veil  of  Isis  remains 
unraised.  For  these  are  the  secret  things  of 
which  Moses  told.  To  us  only  the  visible  is 
permitted. 

Summarily,  then,  the  decision  of  the  Supreme 
Court  of  Pennsylvania  is  all  right.  Belief  in  the 
matters  herewith  submitted  does  not  predicate 
insanity.  That  proposition  is  incontrovertible. 
But  not  the  converse  of  it.  Insanity  may  pro- 
ceed from  the  belief. 


XIX 
THE  MODES  OF  TO-MORROW 

SOMEBODY  or  other,  an  archbishop,  perhaps, 
declared  with  obvious  regret  that  a  woman 
gowned  in  the  height  of  fashion  possesses  a 
serenity  of  mind  joined  to  an  elevation  of 
spirit  which  the  consolations  of  religion  are 
incompetent  to  provide. 

We  have  not  a  doubt  of  it.  But  in  what 
does  fashion  consist  ?  Women  have  been  known 
to  state  that  they  would  rather  be  dead  than 
out  of  it,  yet  when  a  definition  was  sought 
no  adequate  description  could  be  obtained.  For 
it  is  one  of  the  charms  of  women  that  in  ex- 
plaining everything  they  explain  nothing.  That 
is  quite  as  it  should  be.  It  is  for  them  to 
exhilarate  and  for  us  to  expound.  Yet  of 
their  clothes  we  know  little.  A  little  is  a  great 
deal.  But  in  a  matter  such  as  this  no  mere 
man  may  know  much.  It  is  even  discomforting 
to  reflect  that  when  the  hour  comes  in  which 

240 


THE  MODES  OF  TO-MORROW         241 

all    secrets    are   revealed   Fashion  may  resolve 
into  Isis  still  unveiled. 

Meanwhile,  to  the  masculine  eye  at  least,  the 
vagaries  of  it  are  as  recondite  as  the  forecasts 
of  the  weather.  The  mysteries  of  time  and 
space — mysteries  so  mysterious  that  science 
has  reduced  them  to  figments  of  fancy — are 
not  more  enigmatic. 

Perhaps,  then,  it  will  be  safe  to  say  that 
fashion  is  an  active  abstraction — a  phrase  which 
does  not  mean  anything,  but  which  sounds  very 
well.  In  any  event,  it  is  a  form  of  debauchery 
of  which  the  door  is  closed  to  man.  There  are 
exceptions,  however.  The  deponent  has  seen 
six-footers  loll  about  and  admire  their  hunting 
togs.  And  there  are  other  instances.  There  is, 
for  example,  a  certain  marquis  and  there  is  also 
a  certain  clergyman.  The  former  one  day  was 
standing  bareheaded  in  Lincoln  &  Bennett's, 
waiting  to  be  waited  on.  A  prelate  entered, 
marched  up  to  him,  took  his  hat  off,  and  asked 
him  if  he  had  one  like  it.  The  marquis  examined 
it,  handed  it  back,  and  with  a  sweetness  which 
was  silken,  replied:  "No;  and  if  I  had  I'll  be 
shot  if  I'd  wear  it."  The  clergyman  wanted  to 
assist  at  a  table-d'hote  and  could  not.  Through 
a  tailor's  defection  he  had  no  trousers  to  wear. 
Q 


242  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

He  said  he  was  not  a  bit  more  particular  than 
other  people,  but  he  had  noticed  that  a  clergy- 
man going  in  to  dinner  without  trousers  was 
almost  sure  to  excite  remark.  Fashion  is  not, 
therefore,  a  purely  feminine  vice.  There  you 
have  at  least  two  men  who  were  slaves  to  it. 
At  the  risk  of  writing  ourselves  down  as  some- 
thing else,  we  should  like  to  call  ourselves  a  third. 
For,  though  our  ignorance  of  fashion  is  abysmal, 
our  admiration  is  without  bounds.  Apart  from 
the  pleasures  of  pure  mathematics,  we  know  of 
nothing  more  intoxicating.  Behind  its  history  is 
the  history  of  love.  Whoever  invented  the  one 
invented  the  other.  In  days  when  tattooing  was 
apparel  it  has  been  authoritatively  surmised  that 
woman's  attractiveness  was  so  meagre  that  she 
was  as  incapable  of  detaining  men  as  animals  are 
of  detaining  each  other.  There  were  herds,  not 
homes.  The  development  of  the  wardrobe  was 
the  development  of  the  affections.  The  heart 
of  man  began  to  beat  when  woman  ceased  to 
resemble  him.  But  it  was  not  until  meditation 
had  made  her  modest  and  fashion  fastidious  that 
his  enthralment  was  complete.  Then  at  once 
where  the  boor  had  been  the  knight  appeared. 
In  place  of  the  female  came  the  woman.  Hither- 
to she  had  served.  Thereafter  she  began  to 


THE  MODES  OF  TO-MORROW        243 

reign.  In  the  States  to-day  she  rules  the  roost. 
Fashion  has  done  it.  Hence  our  admiration  for 
that  active  abstraction.  Hence,  too,  the  serenity 
of  spirit  which  a  well-dressed  woman  displays. 

That  serenity  is  quite  natural.  Barring  such 
abominations  as  golf  skirts  and  blouses,  smart 
women  have  never  got  themselves  up  more 
fascinatingly  than  they  do  to-day.  In  the  old 
prints  of  earlier  days  they  are  astounding  to 
behold.  Frocks  were  masonry  and  chignons 
architecture.  Caricaturists  represent  les  tres 
grandes  dames  followed  by  carpenters  widening 
and  heightening  the  doors  through  which  they 
pass.  In  one  sketch  a  hairdresser  is  shown  on 
a  ladder  arranging  topmost  curls.  On  the  head 
of  the  Duchesse  de  Chartres  a  coiffeur  succeeded 
in  exhibiting  her  entire  biography.  The  hair 
of  the  Princess  de  Machin  was  manipulated  into 
a  cage,  in  which  were  loosed  three  thousand 
butterflies. 

After  the  amputations  of  the  Revolution 
fashion  must  have  become  simpler,  but  through 
epochs  which  we  lack  the  art  to  describe  it  re- 
mained unalluring  until  Worth  took  a  hand. 
The  women  he  turned  out  looked  like  angels, 
only,  of  course,  much  better  dressed.  To-day 
the  girls  to  whom  Doucet  has  ministered  are 
Q2 


244  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

a  caress  to  the  eye.  Personally,  if  we  may  refer 
to  ourselves,  there  are  frocks  of  Felix  that  have 
seemed  to  us  more  satisfactory  than  old  masters, 
and  there  are  also  confections  of  Paquin  that 
we  have  found  as  exhilarating  as  cups  of  cham- 
pagne. 

In  what  manner  they  are  evolved  and  through 
what  process,  after  their  evolution,  these  rue- 
delapaixian  seductions,  primarily  and,  it  may 
be,  uniquely  designed  to  pleasure  some  Princesse 
Lointaine,  repeat  themselves  indefinitely,  and 
variously  vulgarised,  reappear  on  the  banks  of 
the  Neva,  at  the  Golden  Gate,  in  Bloomsbury 
and  Bucharest,  in  Kandahar  and  Chicago,  the 
Lord  in  his  wisdom  and  mercy  only  knows,  and 
in  so  saying  it  may  be  that  we  exaggerate,  for, 
sure  of  nothing,  we  cannot  be  sure  of  that, 
although,  indeed,  there  has  just  occurred  to  us 
an  incident  highly  enlightening. 

Some  years  ago  the  Queen  of  the  Wends, 
Queen  of  the  Goths,  the  Queen  Matchmaker, 
who  was  the  late  Queen  of  Denmark,  was  also 
Queen  of  the  Bicycle.  In  her  obituaries  the 
fact  was  not  noted.  Compared  with  her  other 
titles  it  may  have  seemed  unimportant.  But 
it  is  only  unimportant  things  that  are  really 
momentous.  Louise  of  Hesse-Cassel  became  the 


THE  MODES  OF  TO-MORROW        245 

progenitrix  of  sovereigns,  and  left  the  course 
of  events  unaltered.  She  got  on  a  wheel  one 
day  and  changed  the  face  of  the  earth. 

The  event  occurred  before  the  flood,  a  full 
decennium  ago,  at  a  time  when  no  decent  person 
would  have  been  found  dead  on  a  bicycle.  It 
was  at  her  summer  court  on  the  Baltic,  through 
the  wide  leisures  of  which  the  selectest  prin- 
cesses and  the  least  exclusive  princes  lounged, 
that  the  deed  was  done.  What  the  mother  of 
an  empress  in  esse  and  of  another  in  posse  does, 
smaller  fry  copy.  The  young  royals,  her  grand- 
children, followed  suit.  Photographed,  bike  in 
hand,  their  pictures  emerged  in  shop  windows. 
At  sight  of  them  Paris  went  mad.  Then  New 
York  caught  a  fever,  which  afterward  spread 
to  London,  and  ultimately  was  reported  to  have 
assumed  epidemic  proportions  in  Melbourne. 
So  runs  the  world  away.  Meanwhile,  the  queen 
had  put  her  wheel  aside.  Imitation  is  flattery's 
most  odious  form.  None  the  less,  a  fashion  had 
been  set,  industries  founded,  manufactories 
multiplied,  and  all  through  a  monarch's  whim, 
because  of  a  summer  day  an  entirely  amiable 
lady  had  seen  fit  to  mount  a  wheel. 

That  wheel  has  since  been  relegated  to  the 
provinces.  In  its  place  is  the  auto.  Presently 


246  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

that  will  pass.  Fancies  vary,  follies  ditto.  The 
one  thing  constant  is  change.  Yet,  as  with  the 
bike,  so  with  bonnets.  What  great  ladies  do 
lesser  ladies  copy.  Therein  is  the  mode's  modus 
operandi.  These  premises  admitted,  there  arises 
the  interesting  problem,  What  shall  the  woman 
of  the  future  wear  ?  But,  before  deciding,  it  will 
be  useful  to  determine  what  sort  of  a  person 
that  woman  will  be. 

Could  the  subject  be  considered  from  the  stand- 
point of  Dr  Schenck's  promise  that  sex  may  be 
determined  by  maternal  nutrition,  it  is  obvious 
that  woman  would  be  scarce  as  Madeira  and 
just  as  heady.  But  though  Dr  Schenck  promised 
he  did  not  fulfil.  As  a  consequence,  the  subject 
becomes  more  complex.  At  the  same  time, 
women  being  all  alike  in  this  that  they  are  every 
one  of  them  different,  it  follows  that  what  is 
true  of  them  to-day  was  true  in  the  past  and 
will  be  in  the  future.  Individually  diverse, 
collectively  they  are  undistinguishable.  To  the 
naked  eye  at  least.  And  it  was  certainly  to 
remedy  this  defect  that  Fashion  was  invented. 
For  however  fancies  may  vary  and  follies  change, 
however  distressing  last  year's  hat  may  look, 
woman  herself  does  not  alter.  It  is  the  mode 
that  passes,  not  the  model.  The  eternal  feminine 


THE  MODES  OF  TO-MORROW        247 

is  everlastingly  the  same.  To  tell,  then,  what 
sort  of  a  person  the  coming  woman  will  be, 
take  a  receipt  from  astrology  and  first  hatch 
her  milliner. 

Even  so  and  even  otherwise,  though  it  is  the 
mode  that  passes  and  not  the  model,  though 
through  the  change  of  years  and  the  convolution 
of  things  the  heart  of  archaic  Eve  beats  through- 
out femininity  to-day,  the  beauty  of  the  lady 
has  developed.  Yet,  as  nothing  is  constant  but 
change,  that  beauty  is  doomed  to  diminish.  In 
the  part  of  the  world  from  which  we  write  it 
cannot  help  itself.  Beauty's  patent  of  nobility 
is  to  be  useless.  Therein  is  the  sorcery  of  the 
rose.  It  charms  and  does  nothing.  Commerce, 
combinations,  concentration,  and  all  that  in  them 
is,  whether  utilitarian,  progressive,  or  both,  are 
beauty's  antitheses.  The  trend  of  the  age  is,  as 
we  have  elsewhere  noted,  to  things  very  large 
and  very  ugly.  In  their  construction,  develop- 
ment, and  expansion  we  all  either  actively  or 
passively  collaborate.  We  cannot  do  otherwise. 
The  Zeitgeist  will  not  let  us.  It  has  us  fast  in 
its  maw.  For  the  bewilderments  of  feminine 
witcheries  it  cares  not  a  rap.  That  for  which  it 
does  care  is  progress.  In  moulding  us  to  its  will 
it  moulds  our  senses  and  muddles  our  souls.  The 


248  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

instincts  it  instils  we  will  transmit.  As  a  con- 
sequence the  babies  to  come  may  develop  both 
brains  and  brawn,  yet  never  beauty.  Now  add 
the  column  up.  The  result  is  plain  women. 

And  so  much  the  better.  Plain  women  are 
currently  considered  neglectable  quantities. 
Such  consideration  comports  an  error  that  is 
profound.  Memoirs  and  missions  have  ac- 
quainted us  with  many  who  dressed,  undressed, 
and  digressed  divinely.  The  picture  gallery  of 
heroines  is  crammed  with  others  who  under- 
stood very  well  that,  while  beauty  may  allure, 
graciousness  enchains.  A  service  of  Sevres  with 
nothing  on  it  is  less  appetising  than  a  petite 
marmite.  Unaccompanied  by  other  attributes, 
beauty  alarms  when  it  does  not  weary.  More- 
over, it  is  only  the  solely  beautiful  who  are 
really  plain.  A  really  plain  woman  is  one  who, 
however  beautiful,  neglects  to  charm.  By  the 
same  token  a  beautiful  woman  who  contents 
herself  with  being  merely  beautiful  is  far  plainer 
than  a  plain  woman  who  does  nothing  but 
beautiful  things.  It  is  for  this  reason  that  the 
most  beautiful  woman  in  the  world  is  always  the 
woman  whom  we  have  yet  to  meet.  It  is  for 
this  reason,  too,  that  in  the  Evangel  of  Women 
it  is  written,  or  rather  will  be  when  the  Evangel 


THE  MODES  OF  TO-MORROW        249 

appears:  Blessed  are  the  plain  who  succeed  in 
charming,  for  theirs  and  theirs  only  is  the 
Kingdom  of  Love. 

But  let  us  consider  the  subject  less  seriously. 
Beauty  is  relative.  Perfect  beauty  is  a  phrase 
and  nothing  else.  Once  upon  a  time  a  philo- 
sopher produced  a  large  volume,  in  the  course 
of  which  he  proved  that  God  is  perfection. 
Then  he  produced  a  second  volume,  equally  large, 
in  which  he  proved  that  perfection  does  not 
exist.  It  were  impossible  to  be  more  exhaus- 
tively witty.  Subsequently  another  philosopher 
produced  a  supplementary  work,  in'  which  he 
proved  that  in  the  absence  of  perfect  beauty 
a  lady  who  is  equally  ugly  all  over  is  more 
satisfactory  than  one  unequally  fair.  It  were 
impossible  to  be  more  profound.  These  views, 
however,  public  opinion  has  failed  to  endorse. 
But  that  is  natural.  Moreover,  there  is  a  dis- 
ease of  the  eye  that  is  catalogued  as  hemiopia. 
Of  any  given  object  the  patient  sees  but  half. 
It  is  one  of  Satan's  greatest  tours  de  force  to 
have  afflicted  us  all  with  that  malady  and 
rendered  us  blind  to  feminine  defects.  It  must 
amuse  him  not  a  little  to  see  how  we  are  all 
taken  in.  Were  it  otherwise  men  would  devote 
themselves  to  pious  works.  For  that  matter, 


250  THE  POMPS  OF  SATAN 

it  is  only  those  who  have  penetrated  the  guile 
of  the  Very  Low  that  do.  As  a  consequence, 
when,  in  the  future,  women  are  plain,  men  will 
occupy  themselves  only  with  virtuous  deeds. 
And  is  not  that  a  consummation  devoutly  to 
be  wished? 

Yet  because  the  coming  Eve  is  to  be  plain 
it  by  no  means  follows  that  she  will  be  painful. 
On  the  contrary.  In  the  good  old  days  of  the 
glory  that  was  Greece,  a  woman  whose  peplon 
did  not  hang  right  in  the  back,  whose  general 
appearance  was  not  modish,  there  and  then,  as 
we  have  somewhere  remarked,  became  a  dis- 
turber of  the  peace,  and  as  such  liable  to  a  fine 
that  varied  with  degrees  of  slatternliness  from 
ten  to  a  thousand  drachmae.  Penalties  not 
similar  but  cognate  will,  we  assume  with  entire 
readiness,  be  visited  by  the  legislators  of  the 
future  on  the  woman  who  shall  in  her  attire 
presume  to  neglect  to  charm.  But  we  assume 
with  equal  readiness  that  such  neglect  will  be 
rare.  For  while  by  that  time  hemiopia  may 
have  become  curable  and  feminine  defects  be 
recognised  and  endured,  it  follows  for  that 
reason  that  women  —  celles  de  la  haute,  bien 
entendu — will  be  tricked  out,  adorned,  and  embel- 
lished, as  were  never  even  the  goddesses  of  old. 


THE  MODES  OF  TO-MORROW        251 

How  the  ladies  of  the  middle  classes  shall 
then  appear  interests  us  no  more  than  how  they 
appear  to-day.  We  take  it,  however,  that 
among  them  there  will  he  some  quite  vulgar 
enough  to  be  pretty.  But  about  the  plain  yet 
peerless  peris  of  the  peerage  of  this  and  other 
lands  there  will  be  garments  immaterial  as 
moonbeams,  gorgeous  as  quetzals,  at  once 
shadowy  and  stunning,  luminous  as  the  zai'mph 
of  Tanit,  coruscating  as  the  shower  of  Danae, 
the  triumph  of  art,  poetry,  and  the  Rue  de  la 
Paix.  For  in  default  of  feminine  perfections 
such  things  as  these  must  be,  if  only  to  per- 
petuate the  species,  and  with  it  the  jubilance 
and  the  guile  of  Satan  and  his  pomps. 


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LIBRARY,  UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA,  DAVIS 

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Saltus,  E.E.  P6 

The  pomps  of 
Satan. 


LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
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